Steve

My old friend Steve (...and, I do mean old! We were Boy Scouts together in the 1950's!) was nice enough to let me click this head shot, while we talked recently.

It was near noon, normally not a good time for photo lighting, but the day was bright and overcast and the clouds acted like a giant soft box in the sky. While we talked, I asked Steve to move to a chair a few feet from a North-facing window, so the top of the window could create the rapid light fall-off across his face. This is known as Portico Lighting.

Steve is a kindly person. He's also very smart (...if you count a PhD from Stanford). And both these things show in his eyes. That's why I filled the frame with his face and positioned his eyes on the diagonals of the image, near the upper third of the frame. That's also why I selectively brightened, saturated, and sharpened his eyes a bit in post processing with CS4.

Also, notice that by cutting off the top of his head in the image, I both limited background distraction and created two, symmetrical, parenthesis-shaped, ( ), negative space shapes, which framed his eyes.

And finally, notice the backlight on both his shoulders that provides leading lines, which lead the eye towards the center of the image, then up the highlights on the nose toward his eyes.

-CG TTL