Picture Of The Year – 2009

Every year, as I ponder my new year’s resolutions, I always try to find the one photo that best describes how I met last year’s promises. The process keeps me grounded in success and helps me determine realistic goals for the new year for creating better photos.

This year’s best photo is of a young softball player after playing six games in a weekend tournament. She was very tired, very hungry, and not eager to pose for what she thought might be too long a time before she could rest and get some of the barbeque being prepared by her family.

I set up a single strobe, an SB-800 at camera left, on a light stand with a small shoot-through umbrella. The shoot-through umbrella softened the light in both direction and focus. The center of the umbrella is just above the line of the bat.

Once she was on the chair I had her turn away from the sun just enough to have the natural light fall across her cheek. The strobe was lined up so it cast a soft shadow across her face giving it depth. Aligning the light without shadows would have flattened her face. It is lined up low enough, almost directly into the girl’s face to fill under the cap’s brim. The close umbrella also added a nice catch light in her eyes.

The girl stood on a chair so I could shoot from a lower angle to eliminate the tree-lined horizon and include the sky. The lower angle is also a more flattering portrait technique.

I was using my Nikon D300 set to Commander mode with the SB-800 strobe set to Remote and utilized the Creative Lighting System to create the lighting ratios I needed to darken the sky and properly fill her face.

Aperture priority f-stop set to f6.3 to narrow the depth-of-field to the girl’s body and keep the sky out of focus. It also helped overpower the sunlight with a single SB-800. The strobe is just out of camera range at left.

The closer the strobe, the more powerful the light. A single SB-800 can overpower bright sunlight at this close distance.

The strobe was set to overexpose enough to compensate for the camera’s underexposure setting. Camera determined the shutter speed to be 1/600th of a second, well within the Nikon D300 ability to shoot CLS with the SB-800. (Full EXIF information)

This was a time for fresh batteries. The FP setting on the strobe and the need to overpower the sun required more power from the strobe. Weak batteries would have slowed the recycle time and kept the girl in an uncomfortable position much longer. It was difficult enough having asked her to stand in the seat of a lawn chair for the photo. To force her to stay longer than necessary would have resulted in a very displeased subject and probably made her more reluctant to pose.

I shot about ten frames having her turn slightly on several to see how the sunlight fell across her face. I alsochange my angle to make sure there was clear sky behind her face. Didn’t want one of the clouds to be a bright spot at her cheek. It was serendipity that the clouds at right fell behind the bat giving it greater contrast against the background.

Also posed her for a vertical smiling portrait with a lighting change, although it is less effective communicating six games in two days, tired, hungry, and reluctant to stand in a chair.

Typical of this type of shoot, I spent more time setting up and tearing down the lights than I did shooting. Getting prepared, setting the lighting and subject position before pressing the shutter for the first frame makes the shoot go much easier, and faster.

Post processing included some Photoshop magic to dial down the saturation and add a slight faded color to more perfectly match the tired and hungry attitude of the subject. The original was bright and colorful, too colorful for the story.

My second best photo(s) of the year are below. It’s some personal shots after the official track team and individual photos.

Let me see yours. Leave a comment with the link.

Enjoy the New Year. Hope your resolutions are good ones and you can make a positive report to me next December 31.