How I took it: Audrey and the Guitar.

Photographer: Al Jurina

For the next several weeks, we are going to start a new series on Wednesdays called, "How I took it". These posts will go into a little depth on the ideas and technical details considered when taking certain photos. In the past, I've found posts like this to be very helpful to me in figuring out my own photography, so I hope that it can do the same for you all.


In the middle of preparing something to eat in my kitchen, I heard my daughter walk in playing a cute little tune on her guitar. As I turned around, my eyes instantly noted the light that was hitting her from the north-facing window. It was perfect. I quickly told my daughter to keep playing as I dashed out and grabbed my SLR. I knew that I would be shooting this in manual mode. The camera would try to balance the exposure, and I wanted it to under-expose the ambient light a little and emphasize the shadows and window light.

The aperture was at f/4, which was the widest that this particular lens could go. The shutter speed was set to 1/160th of a second, which was about 2-stops under what the camera was telling me was correct (I played around with several shutter speeds until I got the correct one). The ISO setting was set at 1250. This was not a priority for me, so I didn't bother with it. I figured that any image noise would add a neat feel to the shot. My concern was the lighting. A quick conversion to black and white and this shot was ready to go.

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