I was not that pleased with my performance on this shoot. I had thought about it a great deal the night before and thought I had a good plan.
What concerned me going in was all the white of the coat combined with the dark bronze colored skin. I wanted to expose the white material correctly such that I had good shadows and lights while also getting a good exposure on the skin. It seemed a difficult thing to do all in one exposure.
My plan was to alternate between spot metering the face, which I thought would have over exposed the clothing, and full metering to get the good exposure on the clothes, which would have under exposed the face.
I think this would have worked out if I hadn't been in such a wild environment. Wild in that there were a lot of other people around that I was interacting with as I was trying to execute my plan. In addition to trying to find a suitable directional light source.
What I got was the effects of leaving the exposure in full metering too often without switching over to spot. Which got pretty good exposure on everything but the face for the shots that I liked. The face had to be brought back digitally. This combined with a relatively high ISO (never below 500) began to put a strain on the pixels.
It takes a lot of focus to pull these things off well, especially when you operate on the kind of programs that I set up. I'm always trying to hurry up before someone asks: "who is this guy anyway?"
It's like the married couple sitting on the couch trying to figure out when they'll get their spare bedroom back. The man turns to his wife and says: "My uncle, I thought he was your uncle!"
Tony,
About the sushi ... you can sit at the bar and watch the sushi chefs make these artful creations. I would tell her: "Those are pretty, but I would never put that in my mouth." She would say: "OK, then try this and see if you like it." It got to be a running joke. I would say my mouth is a temple and nothing like that will ever enter, and she would then offer an alternative to sample.
It may also be that I only order water, crackers and soy sauce, and look so pitiful.
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Mike McCarty
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