Looking for light. Brushing past the preconceptions and leveraging what the location gives you.

 When Selena and I photographed on a friend's ranch we purposely traveled light; just a shoulder bag with some cameras and lenses and no lights or stands. It meant that we couldn't really shape the existing light, we'd have to find light we liked and then lean into it and depend on our shooting angles to get the most out of it. I find that I always want some kind of light streaming across the background of my photographs to break the main subject from the background. In black and white we'd see this as "local contrast" but in color I see it as "color tones". Working in color can be more forgiving because you can use contrasting colors to differentiate between tones even if they are the same luminance value.

In the image above we found a series of exterior windows behind and to the right of camera position and moved Selena into a position where the window light came across her face in such a way as to create a shadow to the right side of her face. We kept nudging over her position until I had the soft green back wall showing on either side of her head, effectively separating her from the background.

Then the real game is to pick an exposure that yields a shutter speed you have some promise of being able to handhold well. Using the faster frame rate of a camera helps in giving you more chances of coming away with a sharp frame...

In this particular photo I used an APS-H format camera, the Canon 1D mk2, an a 50mm lens. It certainly was one of those days when you needed to keep your eyes open to the direction and quality of light. There were no auxiliary lights or ready tripods with which to bail myself out.

But it's a fun exercise for someone who sometimes gets too depend on being able to control all the aspects of most shoots...