March - Storytellers Blog Circle

I'm so excited to be participating in the Storytellers Blog Circle after a few months break for everyone. This is one of my favorite collaborative projects, as I get to share more details about an image with my readers, and then you can learn from other storyteller and Offset artists about their images as well.

This month I'm sharing an image from a recent family trip to Bali, Indonesia. We have found that this is one of our favorite locations for a relaxing family vacation, and I often fall in love with the grounds of the small hotels and villas. 

I had asked my two daughters to walk up and down this path when I noticed that there were some stairs leading up to a second floor hotel room...so up I went. I wanted to capture the movement of them jumping from paver stone to paver stone.

This was the initial image that I had in mind:

This was captured with my Canon 5D mark iii and 24-70 2.8ii lens, and the settings were ISO 500, f2.8, SS 1/500.

I realized that I wasn't able to get all of the amazing foliage clearly in my shot, and that I had more stairs to climb.

So, up I went, and was able to photograph this scene:

Settings: ISO 500, f 2.8, SS 1/500

I chose to utilize an aperture of 2.8 to show some depth in the foreground on the building when compared to the path. The shutter speed choice of 1/500 was adequate to freeze her walking motion and minimize any camera shake that may have occurred from me holding the camera parallel to the ground out in front of me. ISO is typically the setting that I adjust last in an effort to maintain my priority settings, where were SS and aperture here.

I love that I was able to get more of a clear perspective onto the scene as well as some colorful leading lines. I had asked my daughter to skip or hop from stone to stone, but I could barely get her to walk through one more time ... and in the end I think that her more quiet motion matches the mood of the scene better.