Remember to visit http://www.pwassignments.com after you complete the assignment and
share your favorite photo! It’s a community of enthusiastic photographers and a great
place to view what other readers have created. You can also post comments and read
encouraging suggestions and feedback.Assignment
Shoot a portrait in available low light
The assignment for this chapter is to take a portrait in low light and share it on the website. It is
actually easy to shoot a portrait using window light. It sometimes takes a little planning, but the
results can really make it look as if there was a full light setup.
Photographer Rick Sammon was giving a talk in San Diego, and I wanted to get him to pose for
a portrait. Knowing that there was not going to be a lot of time and no way to bring in a lot of
lights, I opted to take the portrait using the available evening light that was coming in through
the glass entryway to the building. The setup was perfect with two glass walls and a white wall
across the way that could act as a reflector. I placed Rick with his left shoulder close to one win-
dow and had him turn his head towards me as I watched the background and the light that was
coming in from the other window. I chose matrix metering so that the light in the whole scene
was taken into account. I set the exposure mode to aperture priority and used an f-stop of f/4.5 to
get a shallow depth of field.
I set the ISO to 400, which was high enough that I could get a shutter speed of 1/30 second. I took
four quick shots, confirming after the first two that the exposure was correct.