The Squirrels and the Birds Come
Sometimes magic just happens in the first few frames. This was one of those situations. I think I shot maybe 30 frames total today, and 10 of them were keepers.
Kate is a Comp-Sci major at WSU Vancouver, and the only female in her class level. While it’s sad that that’s the case, she thought her determination to stick with the program despite any gendered odds against her is something worth celebrating. I’m inclined to agree.
I got up to her place which is on a fairly hefty lot of land. At least compared to the suburbs I’m used to. Her family’s lived there for a long time, and given her connection to it, I wanted to make a photo that would bridge her computer geekery with the nature and home she’s so in tune with. If her reaction at the photos was any indication, I’m pretty sure I succeeded.
While this first shot looks a whole lot like natural light, the natural light under the pacific northwest autumn clouds was a whole lot more flat than this. I put a small light to the left of frame to give just a touch of shape to the face. It definitely wasn’t necessary, and the light would have looked good natural, it’s just the kind of little pop of ‘something extra’ to make the photo shine. She mentioned that white board as something she uses a lot as scratch paper when doing homework or coding, so we wrote out some fake python code and made it an element of the photo.
This shot is my favorite of the day, and one that I think succeeds most in bridging all those various aspects of Kate’s life. I used one of my big lights to light the front of her and bring that light pop to her immediate surroundings, and then used one of the small flashes about a foot behind her to bring in that edge light that separates her from the background and really emphasizes her presence. As is usual in my work for clients, I like to leave that nice bit of negative space on one side. It lets them add in their own copy for use on websites, brochures, business cards, anything really.
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