Portrait in the Park

May 15 was “Picture Today, Inspire Tomorrow” day.  All around the world people were invited to take pictures of their day and upload them  to ADAY.org.  All photos had to be taken between 12:01 am and 11:59 pm local time. Uploads were limited to a maximum of 10 photos.

The project reminded me of the “Day in the Life” books, except anyone could participate. All photos uploaded for that day will be posted on a web site and the best photos will be published in a book this fall. The photos are are about your day, what you do, where you work, what you do for fun, your friends, your home, your neighborhood, your city.

I was scheduled to do portraits in the park for some friends that afternoon. I picked the above portrait as one of my favorites from the photo shoot to send to ADAY.org. It was taken at 5:34 pm, EDT, Columbus, Ohio.

She is a thoughtful and introspective young lady, so I chose a pose that would reflect that.  It was a sunny day, so I picked a location on a bridge that was out of the direct sunlight. I chose a shooting angle that would minimize any sunlight in the background.  At a focal length of 121 mm, an aperture of f/8 gave me enough depth of field for her face but kept the background blurred. The lower light levels in the shade meant I needed to increase the ISO to 400 to get a useable shutter speed of 1/60 second. The increase in digital noise at ISO 400 is pretty minimal.

Exposure Data: Canon 5D. Canon EF 70-200mm f/4 lens at 121 mm. f/8, 1/60 second, ISO 400.

Links

You can learn more about portrait photography, controlling depth of field, lens focal lengths, and exposure (using apertures, shutters speeds and ISO settings) in my book, Digital Photography Exposure for Dummies. You can learn about the book here, and buy it at Amazon.com.

There is set of articles on exposure at my photo web site. Go to “Exposure 101”.

My portfolio of 10 photos at ADAY.org.

Learn more about “Picture Today, Inspire Tomorrow” at ADAY.org.