This is my colleague Fiona from my trip yesterday that I posted the landscape from. On the ferry just before we arrived at Mull we took a turn on deck and Fiona kindly permitted me to take a few pictures of her. I took 6 pictures and this one, the last of them caught Fiona’s characteristic (some might say wicked) smile. The light wasn’t particularly great at the time, and I found the resulting colours lacking warmth and so I chose a low contrast black and white conversion to focus attention on Fiona, and away from the distracting colour elements. Although Fiona has agreed to allow me to try again when we have a little more time and better light, I’m really pleased with the warmth that the picture has captured.
I chose f2 to ensure that both eyes were sharp due to the angle of Fiona’s head putting both eyes in a different plane. At that range with an effective 80mm focal length (50mm lens with 1.6 smaller sensor factor) I only just got away with that. f2.8 would have been safer and if anything I over-blurred the grey seascape background. It’s not the firsty time I’ve made this error and I’ll need to try to internalise the lesson!
