A Summer Evening

Posted by Russ Devan (New Hanover, United States) on 24 September 2008 in People & Portrait and Portfolio.

Today begins a series of photographs that I shot in collaboration with my friend, fellow photographer Betsy Barron. Betsy and I have somewhat similar photographic interests so we work together from time to time and share ideas and techniques.

This past summer while we were putting together ideas for a photo outing, Betsy volunteered to serve as the model in some of our landscape photographs and asked me if I would also take some additional portraits of her, with some meant to be given as a gift. After discussing many concepts for her portraits, we thought it would be fun to have this become a sort of long-term, on-going portrait/landscape project with Betsy serving from time to time as a muse and creative consultant, as well as photographer. So, for one Sunday afternoon and evening in August, we put our photographic minds together and captured what I think are some pretty cool photographs. The results over the next several days are the results of our combined efforts of incorporating tasteful (and in some cases, whimsical) portraits into an interesting landscape, which is something I’ve wanted to explore and develop for quite some time.

Because Betsy is also a landscape photographer very skilled in post processing techniques (as some of you are already aware), I provided copies of my RAW files from our photo shoot to her to experiment with on her own in Photoshop. This is something I usually never, ever do for anyone. Later, when we were reviewing the proofs from that photo shoot, Betsy hit upon the idea of both of us post-processing the images independently and then posting the same images simultaneously on both of our photoblogs for comparison (knowing that we have different styles of post processing). So, over the next several days, both Betsy and I will be posting the SAME but, at the same time, DIFFERENT images on our photoblogs. Keep in mind that I will be seeing her interpretations of these images for the first time as they are posted, just as all of you are.

For this image, we talked about photographing her in a field of Queen Anne’s Lace, which is a wildflower that grows abundantly in fields in Pennsylvania and the eastern US. Betsy found just such a field near our first shooting location. With the sun beginning to set, we attempted to capture the sunlight streaming through her hair and dress. The above image is one that I nearly deleted because it started out life grossly underexposed due to the massive lens flare, but Bets persuaded me not to delete it. In fact, after much discussion, we compromised and produced additional images with and without lens flare.

After reviving this image in Photoshop, it has become my personal favorite from this photo shoot. I like it not only for the lens flare, but also because of the interesting impromptu pose that Betsy struck and how her hair obscures her face to give the pose a bit of mystery.

You can view Betsy’s version of the same photo by visiting her photoblog at http://thebetsy.aminus3.com.

"The Master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both."
- Zen Buddhist Text

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