Hi everyone. Here is my daughter's 9th grade farewell/grad ceremony candid photo I took on June 3rd. Some of the backstory:
Shot on Canon 5DsR, ef 70-200mm IS at f/2.8, from about 30 feet away in the sidelines at 182mm (but cropped somewhat more to fit this category), iso 6400 1/25 of a second, no flash.
The gym was very dark with only stage lights at the front. All the house lights were turned off. The only crowed illumination was from behind on the left sunlight coming through a double door opened up to let air in (no a/c and it was hot). Luckily the sun came in and shone to give some highlights to the hair. The second illumination was from the front from the main doors coming in. But the light was artificial from the connected hall. I had to use iso 6400 (max on normal 5DsR range) and f/2.8. And even then it was 1/25 of a second. As this was a candid and not a staged shot, I had to wait until there was absolutely no movement to get a fairly clean shot. There are some technical problems with the shot (for example I would have liked the boy on the left not to have his parchment and rose in the subject area), but I would counter that given this is a candid, not staged shot, and that the lighting was abysmal, I am quite pleased on how it turned out.
My daughter detests posing of any kind (and getting her picture taken) so I was lucky that she turned to face me and at least gave me a little posing flair.
Immediately after I took the shot I chimped and noticed that the colors overall were uninteresting (mostly black/white/brown for the boys suits). And being a proud dad I wanted my daughter to stand out. I have seen other selective coloring shots but a lot of them were done just for the sake of being done. For me, this selective color allows her to stand out from the crowd and therefore it works for my taste. This is the first time I have done selective color.
Post processing involved the selective color, cropping to fit this category, and some skin softening but not a lot. As she is young and her makeup was done carefully there was not a lot to enhance her skin. Noise reduction was done on Dxo Prime which does wonders for 5DsR.
