One of the ways that helped me learn to create the kind of pictures I wanted to create from a technical standpoint was by trying to reverse engineer the work of others… work that was my friends, that was the photography masters, or, even just cool images I’d seen in magazines. I’d sit there for hours considering what might be at work. It’s a good exercise in trying to understand both the technical stuff AND it can inform the creative for sure.
As such, if anyone is willing to take some stabs, I’d love to know what you think is at work – front to back – in creating this image. Consider lighting, mood, exposures, set build or location, what direction I could be giving the model or anything else you think is relevant. I’ll tell you as much as I can recall about what is actually at work in a follow-up post and maybe kick out a high five or something else to someone who gets closest.
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Here's what I'm struggling with the most… No shadow behind the model!!
It looks to me like you were shooting against the sun, though I have no clue where the lens flare went. But I think that's her shadow beneath her isn't it? The one being cast towards camera left?
Big off-camera light directly in front of her and coming slightly from above (nice jaw-defining shadow), you've overpowered the sun there, but then to keep there from being 2 shadows (the sun's and the flash's), I'm guessing you had to use some fill on the grass, possibly coming from camera left and behind you?
I don't know…
d3x 70-200 @ 200
sunlight peaking through a cloudy/foggy morning.
Lets see..
Light source is:
– to the left but behind the model
– its not diffused, so hard light
– fairly large reflector behind it
– no right side shadow casted by model confuses the guess on the height
– maybe its gobo'd to block from lighting the botom half a bit
Post processing:
– saturation increased
– vignette on the sides
– maybe a composite of atleast 3 diff photos
– composites could explain lack of shadows
K theres a lot to describe haha that was fun, thanks for sharing
http://austinfausto.wordpress.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/austinfausto/
I'm pretty sure this shot is a composition of three, maybe four layers: foreground with talent, (sharp), slope coming from the left and the background slope from the right. The fog in front of the last layer could be extra, though. Sky? hard to tell, it's way blown out (sun? would also match the shading on the grass, I'd guess). Talent is lit by a fairly hard light, I'd say at about eye level or slightly above…
Location? could be anywhere. Or a combination of wildly different places.
Composition wise, it's a clear violation of giving people 'space' within the photograph. That creates quite a lot of tension for the viewer, and raises thoughts like 'why does she want to leave this place?' and 'it's clear that she is leaving, but where is she going?'.
Already looking forward to reading all the other comments!
Triangles, for one thing. Even the "arch" of her back is a triangle, and the set of her neck/arms, all set against the triangles of the hills, horizon lines. Her darker blue t-shirt is also a deepening of the triangle corners of lighter, same hue, blue.
I'll stop there to let someone else play. Cool idea.