week fifty-eight — lost in thought

i had grand ambitions for a New Year’s Eve photo walk with some friends this year, but frigid temperatures got the best of us and we cut the walk short. i did manage to get some solid shots prior to turning in, though, and this one’s my favorite.

looking back on it now, this shot really should have been a failure…i think the cold air must have been numbing my mind, because i certainly wasn’t thinking properly when i snapped the shutter. i had been shooting a couple long exposures when Christina climbed into the pavilion, so i had my camera set at f/13 with ISO 100 to produce an exposure time of about 30 seconds (i was shooting in aperture priority). i opened the aperture up to f/7.1 for this shot, but i didn’t increase the ISO at all so the exposure time was an excessively long 2 seconds that would likely result in some kind of movement/blur that would ruin the shot. but Christina saved me by sitting still for those two seconds, and i couldn’t be happier with the result!

i took a few more of these types of shots of Christina and Lindsay that also turned out well, but this one’s my favorite because of the way that Christina’s upper body kind of disappears into the night, making the shot more dynamic and mysterious.

thanks to everyone who’s followed my work through 2014, and here’s to a 2015 full of photo adventures!