How I Got the Shot 8

HIGH NOON • ORDINARY LOCATION • FLASH + COMPOSITION

The location wasn't impressive. The light was.

I photographed this image at high noon in Alabama in a location that, by itself, wasn't giving me very much to work with. But I wasn't looking at the entire location. I was looking at the pieces I could use.

The light was beautiful. The sky gave me something I could build into the composition. From there, it became a matter of deciding what I wanted inside my frame...and more importantly, what I wanted to leave out.

That's what this tutorial is really about.

I'll take you behind the scenes and show you what the location actually looked like, where I positioned my subject, where I positioned myself, and how I used the sky to anchor the composition and completely change how the environment reads in the finished photograph.

Because this was captured at high noon, you'll also see how I incorporated flash into the existing light and controlled my exposure without losing the look I wanted from the environment.

You'll see the BTS, my RAW file, the decisions behind the capture, and my complete edit from RAW to final.

The finished photograph is only part of the lesson. The bigger lesson is learning to recognize when a location doesn't need to be beautiful as a whole. Sometimes you only need to identify the few elements that matter and build your frame around them.

This tutorial is included in the VP Box. Standalone purchases include lifetime access.