P52:8 | Low Light

This week’s P52 prompt was Low Light. To shoot in low light, you have to choose whether to use a longer shutter speed or to raise your ISO. My first inclination was to drag out my tripod and do some longer exposures, either of city lights or stars. But . . . February. Yeah, we are in the midst of a full-blown Arctic blast here in Kentucky. We still have the majority of our freak foot-deep snowfall on the ground, so going outside hasn’t really been on my list of things I’m willing to do. Going outside at night? Not gonna happen. Once the sun goes down, I’m huddled under a blanket on the couch with a glass of wine and Friends on Netflix. Instead, I ended up breaking my rule that each week’s photo has to be shot that week, specifically for that week’s prompt.

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working on a big spring cleaning project. No buckets and mops are involved, though, because what I’ve been cleaning is my computer. I started out by consolidating all my media files (photos, videos, and music) on the new EHD I got for Christmas. I’ve always stored most of my photos on an external, but over the years, things have drifted, and I realized when I started this project that the iTunes library I thought was on the external was actually on my iMac hard drive.

Once everything was shifted to the EHD, I started in on my Lightroom catalog. This is the year. The year that I sort through 50,000 LR files to cull the shots that need to go and sort, tag, and print the keepers. Because my kids are the proverbial shoemakers’ children. We have very few prints of them since I made the switch to digital when my daughter was born. This article really hit home with me. I don’t want my kids to lose out on images of their childhood because I was too lazy to print them.

While working my way through my image catalog, I’m coming across a lot of shots that I didn’t really like at first glance, but that I find I really love when I see them with fresh eyes. This shot of my daughter is from a couple of weeks ago, when I was working on the sidelighting exercise for this P52. It wasn’t the look I was going for, so I passed it by in favor of this shot. But, when I was scrolling through my images this week, it really caught my eye.

This image was shot by the light of her little bedside lamp, which is very dim. I love the way the light wraps around her face and accentuates the shape of it. Because the light was so dim and I exposed for her the bright side of her face, everything else fell away to black. For some reason it reminds me of the Beatles. Was there an album cover or something of their faces shot this way? No idea. So here it is, my P52 Low Light shot for this week . . .

Want to see more interpretations of Low Light? Next up in this week’s circle is Jude at From My Side of the Lens. Go check out her post and leave her some love. Thanks for stopping by!