Great Expectation
A few months back I took a studio lighting workshop to help better enhance my use of both natural and artificial light in my portraits. As most of you know my wife is expecting our 2nd baby (first baby boy) and I wanted to take a portrait that was totally different from my previous work. I had no idea where to start so i started with different poses and they all seemed too familiar to what I had seen or done. During my frustration I told my wife to relax, because she was tired, so she leaned back to relax and stretch her neck, and then I saw what I had been looking for. I just refined her posture a bit and had her cover up with her hands, I shot about 6 frames and presto! I'm always critical of my work so I wasn't sure I was happy with it until the next day when I came back to review it one more time. I took it to the Professional Photographers of the Greater Bay Area (PPGBA) July monthly meeting for the print competition. I went with really high expectations, I was looking for a perfect score but at the end of the night I came in short by just one point. My score was a 79/100, the only portrait that got a higher score than me in the same category was the teacher that I learned the lighting technique from. I listened the judges give their point of view and reasoning, I was really bummed out, but it was the only way I could really learn so i could not repeat the same mistakes on my next image.

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