I walked out the door after church Sunday and was greeted by perfect portrait light thanks to a big cloud over the sun. I love spontaneous shoots and I have been shooting this young woman since she was three years old (along with the rest of her family).

I picked a nearby tree as a backdrop, metered her face, added one stop of light (+1 exposure compensation) and started taking pictures. An aperture of f/7.1 gave me just enough depth of field for the features of her face. I turned the ISO up high enough to have a decent handheld shutter speed.

The sun popped out from behind the thick clouds and the soft light was gone. The metadata for the first image said 11:50:42 am and the last was 11:51:39. We did eleven frames in 57 seconds. In contrast to the 6+ hour photo shoot with Kristina, sometimes a minute is all you need.

Photo Data: Canon 5D Mark III. Canon EF 24-25mm lens at 58mm. f/7/1, 1/60 second, ISO 500.