In addition to my position at the Daily Emerald, I work as a web developer and photographer for EMU Marketing. My primary job is writing web applications for EMU programs, but sometimes I get tasked with producing photographs for the websites. Today’s assignment was to make a portrait of Robin Holmes, UO Vice President of Student Affairs.

I showed up a bit early at Johnson hall for my 1:15 appointment, but Robin’s assistant said that it wasn’t until 1:45. No problem- I used the time to scout locations nearby. As it was near-freezing outside, I tried to find a spot where I could put her near a window to get a colorful and green background without making her too cold. I didn’t find anything that I liked enough, though, plus it was going to be very hard to keep the reflections from the inside lights out of the frame. So outside it was. I ended up liking the space behind Johnson Hall- it had some grass, some trees and some old buildings.

I shot a few test frames of the potential backgrounds to get a sense of the exposure. At ISO 100 and 1/200th, the sky was about f/8, the sun about f/5.6 and the shade all the way down around f/2.8. I knew I wanted to keep her in the shade to avoid fighting with the sun with the speedlite. The sun wins that one. I guessed I’d be able to keep the speedlite under 1/4 power if we were in the shade, which would make recycling time almost a non-issue (yay!). I guessed that 1/4 power into an umbrella would give me a reasonable working range (five feet?) at ISO100 and f/2.8, and I knew I could switch to 1/2 power and f/4 if I need to drop the ambient more than I could with 1/200th at f/2.8. The hand test (sticking my hand in front of the lens) showed these guesses to be pretty close. If she was too dark, I’d move the flash closer. If the background was too dark, decrease the shutter speed.

It looked pretty close, so I went inside and waited for a bit. Once she was off the phone we went outside, joked around a bit, fired off about 30 frames and were done. Six minutes total out in the cold.

I’m getting more and more comfortable shooting quickly under pressure, which I attribute mostly to planning and practice. Oh how important they both are.