This is Sonja Björk, she was in 3rd place this year in the Miss Iceland competition, I took this shot of her during a promo shoot we did of her. Makeup is done by Henný.
We were in between some trees shooting some typical (well typical for me at least) shot´s in the shade between trees, when I got this idea on lighting a shot so we went out in the open. My buddy Viktor came along and also her boyfriend Ómar and they helped me out in this shot. She faced away from the sun, it was pretty much straight behind her beneath a cloud cover. Viktor held a translucent reflector right behind her and Ómar had a white bounce reflector on my left. Well the lighting worked well, I wanted the white backlight to bleed through softly, but I felt there was something missing and there was no wind to move her hair so Ómar used his reflector to not only light her up but used it to create wind as well to blow her hair around, I had to time the shots pretty carefully to get both the wind in the hair and the light on her face just right.
This is probably the first time in years that I have not used any method in post processing to increase the contrast in a shot, I tried it at first to make the dark parts more dark but I liked it much better like it is presented now so I really disagree with those who commented on that part but hey, we can´t all have the same taste all the time, right?
One of my favorite portraits this year.
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I love the effect of the muted tones in the white and the skin coloring here! Here right eye (the one not under bangs--anatomical right) just explodes out of the shot. There is a soft sensuality here that just brings me in and makes me want to find out what secret she is playing with.
Interesting high-key approach - just a bit too high though and could do with bringing in some near black in the lowlights. Good detail and nice model with a natural look in her eye.
great one. I love the lighting and the DOF. I would really be interested to you how you did the lighting on this one, and managed to have the background disappear in the light like this.
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