January 27, 2012 – A year of portraits – North Pep Club Group Portrait

Saleste Springfield, center, along with a host of other Madisonville-North Hopkins students cheer on the Maroons to a 82-49 victory over their cross town rival Hopkins County Central Friday night at Madisonville. They are members of the peo club and had these large cutout portraits of coaching and school staff members along with players of the team they were using during the game and I couldn’t resist shooting a group portrait for my year long challenge.

Sometimes you don’t really know what to expect that helps make a picture, for this one it was Saleste. She was standing at the right side of the picture when I stepped over to them to shoot this group portrait. She wasn’t really looking at what was going on at first, as she was talking to a friend. When she looked up and saw I was taking their picture she jumped into the middle and made the picture.

The photo was edited using Photoshop CS5 using levels, standard sharping and the burning tool to darken the edges of the photo to draw the viewers eye into the center of the photo. Most folks don’t realize it, but typically your eye will go to the brightest area of a photograph first and then work its way around from there. So, keep this in mind when shooting your pictures and try not to include bright objects that might detract from your photos subjects.

Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 26mm
Exposure: Matrix Metering, 1/320, f/2.8 with an ISO of 4,000
File Type: Nikon RAW