Donna was always good to us. Darlene has always been good to us too. So when Darlene mentioned that she receiving an award this spring, I offered to take her portrait for the brochure. This time, when she needed a new photo of the now-renovated diner to put on her menu, she felt comfortable asking; I was interested in exploring what I could do.
Yesterday morning, Austin and I went to the diner a little earlier than usual, so that I could setup the tripod. I already knew what composition I was going to use. As a stand-alone photo, I preferred a wide-angle composition from the nearest sidewalk, but it required a landscape orientation. The menu required a square or portrait orientation, so this was the best that the scene could offer.
I captured my base exposure and immediately realized that I probably should have tried to arrive even earlier, before there was any light in the sky in an effort to eliminate any reflections in the windows. A lesson learned for the future, maybe.
I then proceeded to capture some flash pops to simulate some uplighting:
… and I waited for one of the regulars to go through the front door. Then with some basic Photoshop skills I began to to clean-up the image as best as I could. I eliminated the overhead wires, the building number, the AC unit and the street-sign that annoying bifurcated the right-sided window and obstructed the view of the neon sign. Then I processed it through Adobe Lightroom and Nik’s Viveza and Color Efex Pro.
I don’t love the final result, but it is the best that I could do considering the circumstances and my current skill set.