January 24, 2012 – A year of portraits – The Dawson Springs Panther

Tonight I thought about asking the Dawson Springs Panther’s mascot to remove his head so I could get a portrait of the real person behind the mask, but decided against it. Too many kids around and I’d hate to ruin the mascot mystique, if you know what I mean. Seems like most all schools have a mascot of some sort, but to my knowledge only a few high schools in our area actually have a costumed mascot that is at games.

The photo was processed using Photoshop CS5 and cropped slightly from my original photo. I really prefer to shoot in camera the way I want the final photo to look, but changed my mind to crop out a distracting light colored painted strip above his head. After adjusting levels and doing a little burning in on the edges I used the Topaz Adjust filter called “vibrance” before emailing the photo by to my iPhone so I could add the Polaroid style border to it using the app Photogene.

Technical Details:
Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8
Exposure: Matrix Metering, 1/400sec, f/2.8 with an ISO of 4,000
File Type: Nikon RAW