Faces (or Zombies on Stephen Avenue)

Week 18

See more zombies by clicking here, but be warned! Some are pretty gruesome.

The faces of people are endlessly interesting, but photographing strangers up close is difficult for me. It seems easier when I am in a foreign country and I am the stranger because afterall it is expected of a tourist, but it seems hard when at home. Fortunately zombies don't seem to mind if you photograph them. In fact, they seem to like it.

The Zombie Walk was yesterday here in Calgary. Most zombies go "into character" as soon as they see a camera pointed at them. I think a number of people thought I was with a newspaper or something. Those that I asked for a photo did so willingly. This was a fun day and I must have photographed a 100 zombies.

The Nikon D3 is perfect for doing this kind of photography. Focus is fast and I put it on continuous focus when the people started moving. I used an AFS Nikkor 24-70mm 1:2.8 G ED lens and zoomed to fit the situation.

Primary light was from an overcast sky with no direct sun for the most part. I used a SB800 flash in TTL mode attached to the shoe and dialed down by 0.7 to 1 full stop for fill on most shots. It puts a twinkle in the eye and takes the shadow off the face. It also falls off fast if you are near the person being photographed and by brightening them relative to the background makes them pop. It also freezes some movement. For most shots the camera was in aperture mode.

Almost all the photos were processed the same way. I was shooting raw photos and the first thing I did in Raw was to make sure there were no blown out areas then moved the slider to around 15 for both clarity and vibrance. After opening in Photoshop I removed distractions in a few cases and put at least linear contrast on every photo in Curves. I put a heavy vignette on most of them.

Idea based on Face Value, pages 36 and 37 in the book 50 Photo Projects, by Lee Frost