“The Eyes Have It!”

Don Kimmer's Granddaughter Gia

What does it take to make a great casual portrait? A combination of good light, unobtrusive background, sharp focus on the eyes, a relatively long focal length, a wide aperture, a natural pose and…. maybe a little luck. The background here is a sidewalk (the blue tint indicates the shot was made in the shade). The lighting is soft and diffuse, not direct. The lens was zoomed in to 135mm and the f stop chosen was f/5.6 to blur the background. The pose is natural and perfect with the two hands on an apple which is about to be crunched.

This image was captured when Don was having lunch with his granddaughter at a local elementary school during one of those “grandparents’ day” invitations.