January 12, 2012 – A year of portraits – Marlene Moreland

01.12.12 Marlene Moreland

Meet, if you haven’t already, Marlene Moreland, she’s responsible for the snow that appeared in our area today. Marlene works at our front desk of The Messenger and anyone that knows her is aware of the “Snow Dance” she does every year that brings the snow to town, or at least that’s the story our recently retired editor Tom Clinton started telling everyone over 15 years ago. It’s been said that you can catch her sometime on our loading dock doing her dance and I can attest to that fact. So, you can see why she had to be my portrait of the day, since this is the first real snowfall we’ve had this year. Plus she’s got a great smile and always gives it away to our customers and staff alike.

Camera was the Nikon D700, Lens, Sigma 24-70 f/2.8 at 46mm, Exposure was 1/250sec at f/2.8, with a ISO of 4,000 with matrix metering. Post processing was done in Photoshop CS5 with a mild color correction and the Topaz Adjust filter called ‘Photo Pop” applied to sharpen up the image.

Sometimes it’s just a matter of waiting

Parents wait for their children, in blowing wind and snow, Thursday afternoon at West Broadway Elementary School in Madisonville. Hopkins County Schools were dismissed two hours early due to the threat of freezing temperatures and snow. (Messenger Photo by Jim Pearson)

I heard early in the day that they were going to dismiss school two hours early today due to the weather and decided I wanted to get a picture for the front page of the paper as parents were picking up their kids.

West Broadway Elementary is right down the street from the newspaper and so I made my way over there and positioned myself across the street as the kids were getting out. It was COLD!

I had a couple shots on the camera that were OK, but not really what I wanted so I waited a bit longer till I saw these two girls come out with a umbrella they were using to keep off the snow, or so they thought and I knew I had what I wanted and then one of the parents threw up his hand to wave at his child at the door which helped make the photo for me 100% better. I decided that I wanted to include the activity on the left side of the photo to show the kids rushing in the cold and other parents waiting to pickup their kids.

When you are out shooting a situation it’s always good to not rush yourself and be patient because you just never know when your picture will come together, even in the COLD.

Technical Details
Nikon D700
Nikon 80-200mm f.2.8 – 1/400th sec at f/10 @100mm
ISO 1600
Matrix Metering