On a recent Sunday morning, Andrea VanVreede was going home after dropping her daughter off at a friend’s house when she began to wonder why some of her neighbors had bags of corn in their driveways…
The photo taken above was seeking to portray a certain degree of mystery of the subject. I framed the subject behind some flowers and plants and framed the shot such that she seems to be peeking out from the flowers. Her face is partially covered by the flowers, but yet centred in the frame to draw attention to her as the subject of the photo. To do that, it was also important that the focus of the photo is on her, and for the foreground (the plants) and background (buildings and signs) to be blurred. The blurry background and foreground was achieved by manually dialling the camera to a low f-stop number.
In addition, for the photo to have a sense of mystery, I tried to play around with the lighting such that part of her face would be cast in her shadows. With the natural outdoor lighting, I was able to position such that the light hit from the left of the subject, thus casting a shadow on the right of her face, while her left profile is illuminated by the glow of the golden sun.
Below are other photos taken of the same subject, in different locations, lighting positioning, and composition, which I also liked, but I felt did not make the cut:
The above photo was an attempt on using backlight to create a dark shadow and a silhouette.
Kevin Lu has been interning in venture capital over the last year, in one of Australia’s top corporate venture capital firms, Reinventure Group. We spoke to him about what it’s like working in VC and…