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| Christmas Doll: Community Christmas Parade L. A. Lewin Copyright 2012 |
Greetings! Hope everyone is well and ready for the holiday season!
A suburban community North of Atlanta was having their annual Christmas parade, and I asked the organizer if I could capture a few shots - he pleasantly agreed.
Colored lights sparkled and Christmas music blaring - holiday-joy resonated in the air! To capture the mood, Flash was not used - but instead, I dial-in a very high ISO value. High ISO settings create a low signal-to-noise ratio or a noisy - film-grain character. In landscape or most portraiture photo shoots this is not the first choice for photographers, but to create or in this case, capture a mood, the high ISO setting was utilized. I was aware making this choice may yield less "keepers" that if I used Flash. But eliminating Flash was essential to creating the holiday spirit I felt while on location.
I approached each of the parade floats just before they began their journey through the neighborhood - at least I would minimize the amount shaking or movement of the subjects - to give me more chances to capture acceptable images.
Through the viewfinder, I kept aware of the space surrounding the subjects and tried to keep cars, light posts and identifying signs out of the frame. Because I was working fast and did ask children or adults to pose, I kept my Canon 16-35mm F2.8 L II set at 35mm for the entire session. Later I can re-crop if needed to compose as desired. Being dark and not using Flash I dialed in an F/2.8 aperture, wide-open, setting. This will allow as much as light as possible to pass through the lens and onto the sensor. As it relates to focusing, the wide-open setting will create the most bokeh - or blur - near and around my point of focus, thus narrowing my room for error, but aware I will be creating soft, film-like photographic images - and this is what I wanted.
The lovely image above was one of 4 frames captured while kneeling to the side of the float. The young girls doll-like expression-character captured the innocents and spirit I was looking for.
Your feedback is always welcomed. Thank you.
Technical:
- ISO 6400 (No Flash)
- Aperture Priority mode: I set the aperture to F2.8, (wide open)
- Captured @35mm angle of view
- Shutter: 1/50 second
- Chromatic & Luminance corrections via CS5 software
- Black+White conversion via Silver Efex Pro 2 digital darkroom software
- No other post-production manipulation applied to this image file
