What to Write About?

What to write about? What to write about? What to write about? Always the question, rarely an auto-response answer.

How about that Devi? (Pictured left.) The word, "sultry" comes to mind, no?

I became so sick of looking at all that red brick I decided to de-saturate the color to the point it's all muddled and barely remains in the spectrum. I'm not sure I like the overly de-saturated color all that much but I think I like it better than leaving all that brightly-lit, distracting and attention-grabbing red freakin' brick glaring in the image.

I mentioned, in a previous post, that I had little room to place the models further from the brick wall. If I had, the light fall-off would have darkened the brick to the point it wouldn't be so distracting. Or, if I had some other grip gear with me, flags or grids or whatever, I could have dealt with it differently. But that was not to be. You might think I'm obsessing on the brick wall and perhaps you're right. Maybe that's why I keep playing Pink Floyd's, "The Wall," over and over?

It's not that I don't like brick walls per se. They're okay. And sometimes they work out really nicely. But I take my pretty girl shooting seriously and when elements of a photo don't work for me, especially when it's due to conditions beyond my control, my ability to control--considering the gear I had with me, or lack of gear--I ain't a happy camper. Sure, I always have PS tools to deal with these things. And I used some of those tools to take down the wall's loud presence. But I'd rather deal with stuff like this in production. I'd rather shoot it closer to the way I want it to look but, sometimes, a whole host of variables (time, space, gear, a sudden breakdown of my skills, i.e., sort of like "skills amnesia") gets in the way of doing so.

In the end, whichever of these pics are used by some graphic designer will probably include cutting the model out from the dread, red-brick BG. And upon seeing that end result, I'll probably be okay with the use of the image. So maybe I should yank the Pink Floyd CD out of the stereo?

Maybe.

Sultry Devi shot with my Canon 5D w/28-135 IS USM. (Possibly the best, damn, inexpensive, all-purpose, utility lens Canon has ever produced.) Exposure was at ISO 100, f/8 at 100.