Brooke at Callaway

It is becoming a tradition it seems for me to have a black and white picture of Brooke at Callaway at the end of each summer. Here is this summer’s  shot with my 35mm

ISO 100 f 2.8 ss 1/500

To even out last years more moodier picture of Brooke, this one shows the sweet side of my Brooke. She has become a great swimmer this year, and I love the story this picture tells. To me it shows her more tender side, yet her confidence in her new found skills. It’s a perfect picture to end out the summer.

My ss were high enough that I definitely could have closed down my aperture (smaller hole, larger number), but I kept it open to make sure that the sand behind her would be blurry. I have lots of pictures from that day with her playing in the sand, but this one I wanted focused just on her face. For the most part this picture has a lot of light and midtone colors, not many darks. The darks it has though are in the right spots that it makes the picture work.

They are in her dark hair drawing focus to her goggles (again telling the story), her eyes (leading your eye down the picture), and then the end strands of her hair that perfectly frame her face and create a border between her face and the background sand which are very similar in tone. If I would have tried this picture with Erika, my lighter hair daughter it probably wouldn’t have worked as well. For her I tend to do the opposite and have her against darker backgrounds (the grass, tree leaves, darker building, etc.)

The other thing I love about this picture is the angle of her head. Having it tilted in towards the center of the picture draws your eye into the picture, and having the negative space on the opposite side of her keeps your eyes in the picture. If there would have been something to her left (camera right) your eye would have followed that and left the picture. It also gives her a sense of being a little bit coy. Having her head straight up and down in this setting would have been too serious, and less playful.