The Shoot! The Day Photo and Other Musings

I’m not quite sure what caught our eye with this photo. Before we even thought of Shoot! The Day as an event, we had been talking about this phot...

I’m not quite sure what caught our eye with this photo. Before we even thought of Shoot! The Day as an event, we had been talking about this photo. It almost looks like the girl is walking on the moon or some other exotic locale. The silhouette of the camera, the strange bokeh, the hint of green tone in the dress….it all comes together fabulously.

Photo by Sean Marc Lee / #PSC000118425

I decided to ask the photographer, Sean Marc Lee, out in Los Angeles about the photo (Can’t let Rachel “The Glove” Hulin have all the fun in her blog).

Where did you take it?
This was taken in Malibu right off the Pacific Coast Highway at one of the really small coastal reserve beaches (can’t remember the name). I believe it was during golden hour a little before sunset. January sunsets tend not to be so warm in tone. I remember that day because it’s the exact day the Malibu fires started and I managed to take a picture of the smoke from a distance and had submitted to CNN as a reader submitted “breaking news” picture.

[ed note: ooh! The old CNN rights grab! They got lucky this time!]

Who is the subject?
The subject is my girlfriend Yumi, who seems to appear a lot in my photos for some reason…

What were the circumstances for the photo?
We like to do a lot of exploration and try to find interesting places you wouldn’t expect to find in Los Angeles. She recently received a Nikon D70 at the time and wanted to try it out. She’s very curious by nature so we kind of just wander around places on our own but together. I believe it was low tide at the time, so we walked out where that pool of water is. As she was
walking out I just liked the way she was carrying her camera and by instinct crouched down and took the picture.

Oh, and if I know we’re going out to explore or something where potential photos can happen, we go through her wardrobe to find something photogenic.

There’s a weird bokeh, were you using a doubler? Or is something else
causing that effect?
I like using really shallow depths of field. On the 5D, I usually kept it wide open at f1.4 at all times with the center focus point selected. It’s similar to using old cameras, focus in the middle and reframe instead of letting the camera decide what point to focus on. As far as technical specs, it was shot at f1.4, 1/1000 at ISO 100 with exposure compensation set to -2/3 on Aperture Priority. As the subject is backlit, I believe it’s causing some weird effect with where the light is meeting the horizon!

And are some other photos from the day…

Photo by Sean Lee

Totally awesome. Sean Shoots! The Day every day.

Everyone loves acronyms
Acronyms sure are handy.

PSC = The PhotoShelter Collection
PA = Personal Archive
RRS = Research Request System

When we started planning our newest announcements, a few more acronyms were born:

SOS = School of Stock — our cool new resource on stock photography from the mouth’s of buyers

However, “Shoot! The Day” provided some challenges for obvious reasons. Had we planned the event 30 years ago, it wouldn’t be a problem because back then STD didn’t have any strange connotations that I’m aware of (we called them VDs back in the day), ah, but here we are in the 21st century.

I was pleased to find that the Strobist solved the problem for us by referring to the event as S!TD. Now, that’s a creative solution. When I saw his post this morning, i shouted, “SEXUALLY, transmitted disease” and heard a few tentative giggles around me. But in fact, it stands for “SHOOT! The Day.”

Ok, go take some pictures.