Fabián Luque

Versión en castellano también disponible.

During the 365 project, several times I had the satisfaction of creating, in my humble opinion, good pictures.

In this particular case, the photo of the day 354 came as most of the best photos: spontaneously.

The idea

On the way to the supermarket to buy some stuff to cook at night, I found a dandelion on the side of the sidewalk. A rarity in the city of Buenos Aires. I debated internally whether to take it or not, because at any moment might come a dog and do its dirty stuff over it. The supermarket was about to close, so I decided to take the risk. Fortunately (or not), when I was back, there it was waiting for me.

Walking that blocks served as a trigger to begin shaping the idea. It all started with a flashback to my childhood. Playing in my hometown where the dandelions were everywhere. It felt very similar to that scene where Anton Ego from Ratatouille tastes the food and he’s transported back to happier times.

Minutes later I remembered that many people make a wish and then blow the dandelion, so the wish can become true. The idea was formed, I was back at home to cook. The shooting time would come after dinner.

The light

For this photo I used a Nikon SB-900 at 1/32 power, 200mm zoom and a home-made 25cm snoot made with black cardstock. To kill the ambient light I set the shutter speed to 1/250s and the aperture to f/9. The initial strobist setup was:

I placed my daugther, set the flash on the table, grabbed the camera and I started making some tests. The initial result was encouraging:

I added the dandelion to the mix and the problems began:

Clearly, the flash in front of the subject would not work. The dandelion cast an unwanted shadow. I move the flash to the side:

The result indicated that it was not a good choice:

The face was well lit, but not the dandelion. I moved the flash again, this time to the other side. This was the new setup:

This time the light is great, but the model didn’t help:

The photo

I had the light setup, so it was only a matter of making the model give the final shape to the picture I had in mind. I talked to her, I explained what I wanted and started shooting. In one of the first attempts, I get this shot:

When I look at the viewfinder, I have this unique feeling, indescribable. That feeling told me that I just shot what my mind envisioned. It rarely happens, but when it happens, it’s fantastic.

I kept trying anyway. You never know. Maybe the future will bring a better picture. With the security of a good photo taken, it’s always good to take risks and try other things. But this time nothing better happened.

The post-processing

During the 365, the 100% of my pictures were edited in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3. In this screenshot you can see the adjustments I made. Some comments:

• Saturation: Completely desaturated image to get the picture in B&W.
• Exposure: I fixed the exposure. The light seemed brighter in the viewfinder, but not on the screen. The advantages of using RAW.
• Contrast: Adjusted the contrast to accentuate the light in the face and in the dandelion and reduce the attention in the areas around the hair and hand.
• Clarity: One of my favorite settings. In this case, I wanted the grayscale in the illuminated area of the face to be more extreme. It also helps to highlight the details of the dandelion.
• Crop: Although the original framing was not bad, I wanted to get an unbalanced picture. The person making the wish at one end, at the top. The dandelion at the other end, at the bottom. Nice contradiction, since the mere act of making the wish inverts the balance.
• Black Clipping: I wanted to accentuate the contrast and make the area around the face darker, to draw attention only to the highlights.
• Shadow Tones: Lets you control a little more in detail the transition from light to shadow. In this case, I altered slightly that transition in the face.
• Light Tones: It allows only the highlights to become brighter. With this setting I wanted to add a surreal touch, a dreamy effect to the photo.

The final step was to export to JPEG and apply the Unsharp Mask filter in Photoshop CS5. I like better the result that I get instead of using the built-in sharpening in Lightroom. The result of the edition can be appreciated if we compare the initial and final images:

How can you learn to use on setting or the other? Practice. There’s no other answer.

So… let’s practice!

Tags: 365, backstage, diagramas, edicion, light setup, lightroom, panadero, photoshop, sb900, strobist