creating photographs, and finding photographs

This QUICK portrait was taken before her prom, i found a shady but still bright area in her back yard where there was evenly green forest off behind her that was shaded. Shot around 4 o'clock the natural light was great on the top half of her face, but was still harsh enough to leave some nasty shadows under her eyes. to fix that i used a small silver reflector that her mom held out a couple feet in front of and below her face, reflecting light to the underside of her facial features. It filled in the shadows nicely, and gave her eyes an interesting catch light down in the 6 o'clock position rather than the conventional 11 or 1 o'clock positions. shot with an 85mm lens on a d200 at f/2 or so the shallow depth of field really draws me to the eyes, and help blur out the vegetation behind her. to further seperate her from her background i brought the greens down in lightroom, and used a nik color efex filter for part of the black and white conversion. small collapsable reflectors are cheap, and can be one of the best tools you will use in portraiture! its an important tool to learn how to use.

no set up here, i just happened to be in the right spot!
. . . .i've been really bad about processing my images from thailand and vietnam this past summer, but i'm getting better about it, and this is how i will be printing this shot. i've blurred the left hand portion, helping seperate the guy from the water and mountains then with some burning and dodging i got what i feel is is a more presentable image!

getting out and EXPLORING makes a huge difference in how many interesting shots i happen across (duh). But really, had i not gotten off the freeway and spent some time figuring out how to get to this abandoned set of buildings then this shot never would have happened. I would like to say this was the "desisive moment" that we all wish we could catch every time. what i liked about this was how cluttered and messy the building was, and that all but one of those dogs seem to be posing for the photograph while the other is rather concerned with the state of her . . . well you see. . . They seemed to have a sense of ownership of the building, and came across as proud of it.

this place was scary, there were 6 (or more) large abandoned, unfinished apartment buildings with soi (thai for street) dogs everywhere! it was quiet for bangkok, and then 10-15 dogs ran up to me barking and getting pretty close . . . there were bones everywhere and it was evident they are used to visiters bringing regular meals. some homeless people had stayed in the buildings and posters of the king were on the wall, clothes littered the ground. walking through the area made the dogs nervous and they retreated to various buildings, the ones in the photograph stopped at their porch to keep an eye on me and voila, i've got a fun dog shot.

it was a really strange day, dogs were barking from the wall-less 2nd and 3rd stories of buildings, peering over to see who had intruded on their little city.

good times!

and check out this rediculous gothic cathedral! Daniel sent me this wiki link, and i think you should check it out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedlec_Ossuary