Welcome to the April edition of our Storytellers Blog Circle! If you’re new here, our intention is to use our collective posts to give you, our beautiful and amazing readers, our storyteller point of view. We’ll provide a little background, and then tell you why we’re drawn to the image and pass on the technical details (ignore if that’s not your thing 🙂 ).
We (twenty hour’d car) traveled out-of-state to Memphis and St. Louis for spring break, and then we turned around the following weekend for another out-of-state trip to Indiana. In this exhaustive exhilarating time, we have explored incredible museums, ate at uh-mazing restaurants, connected with dear friends and family, celebrated holidays and reunions, crossed rivers and hugged lake edges, watched spring bloom before our eyes with each southern mile, took in epic monuments and skylines. Ask the kids their favorite part of this 10-day journey and in their top three unanimous responses is “the hotel.” I.Can’t.Even.
Here, Ben, bed-headed and shirtless, parts the hotel curtains in the morning to find our room facing the blinding, rising sun. He cups hands around his face to shield his eyes, and in doing so, he exposes his symmetrical silhouette.
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Technical details: Canon Mark III, 24mm, ISO 160, f6.3, 1/200
My settings were clearly from shooting outside in bright light the day before. My camera was tucked away, and when I saw this unfold, my response time only allowed for retrieval and shoot. While I usually give much more thought to my settings, my choice here is dedicated on why I culled to this final image above compared to my other two choices below. While I do love his curious peek on the left image (below) and more visible bedhead on the right image, the above image was a clear winner for his exposed silhouette and eliminating that overexposed beam of light. However, in my finished image, I intentionally pulled up the foreground shadows to reveal the wrinkled, oceanic rippled sheets, not only as defining place as a storytelling element but also a beautiful textural contrast with smooth curtains.
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Shoot me any questions you may have about my storytelling process!
In the meantime, please continue the circle to see Andrea’s storytelling post RIGHT HERE!
xo,
Jen
Beautifully Ordinary is a trademark of Jen Lucas Photography, LLC.
