I had the opportunity recently to photograph a civil war battle reenactment. The reenactors recreate more than just battles, they recreate the way of life of the time. This allows for a lot of interesting photography in the soldier’s and sutler’s encampments prior to and after the actual battles. It’s a terrific insight into what life was like during a tumultuous period of the nation’s history.

I haven’t done any personal shooting in a while, shooting for clients has been keeping me very busy. So for today, I’m posting something I’m working on right now. This is from a series of promotional images for a real estate client that I just shot.

This is an excerpt from a workshop I taught recently, one of only two photos I took during the day. I made it to demonstrate a concept. The students were all shooting the model head-on and centering her in the frame, pretty simple stuff. I wanted to demonstrate a bit of outside-the-box composition. The concept here is based on adding the bright area at the opposite end of the frame from the model. The eyes of the viewer would normally find the primary subject (the model) in the composition and then stay there. The eyes however have a natural tendency to be drawn to the brightest area in an image so in this instance the eyes have two elements competing for attention across the frame and a path to follow between them. This sets up visual tension in the image and adds a bit more interest.