Sunday Snapshot - exquisite

{Grace - age 9 and 1/2}

The inspiration for these images
was my daughter Grace's
beautiful ballet dress.

My mother is a talented sewer, and it's from her that
I've gained a true appreciation for fabric, and love of color and design.
The pattern of the tiny beads on the top of this dress is exquisite
and I loved capturing the detail.

I originally thought I'd keep these images all in color 

but felt black/white suited them just as well.

You can see so much

 of this gentle, sweet soul (who is Grace)

in them.

These were taken early last week
when we had some time one late afternoon.
I used the beautiful north window light from different perspectives,
using light facing Grace, from the side and behind her.

Taken with my Nikon D700,
the portraits were taken with my 85mm 1.4 lens
with settings of:

 f/1.4
ISO - 320
 1/200 sec.

For the other images I used my 35mm 1.4 at:

 f/2
ISO - 1000
1/250-1/500 sec.

Edited with Florabella's bl/white 'Vanilla' action (one of my favorites for bl/whites).
I opened up the action and tweaked it a bit with the contrast and light, leaving the tones the same.
In the very first image I also added a little bit of 'White Haze' from her 'Hazy Skies Collection.'
I liked the effect.

For the color versions, I used Florabella's 'Classic Color' action with a touch of  'Soft Warmth'
on a couple of them.

For the last one of her profile,
 I did very little other than crop the image (it didn't need much)
and increase the contrast a bit. I love the simplicity of it.



As for personal favorites, I have two... they're the first one and second to last images.

Grace and her brother Will performed this weekend in their dance school's recital.

I'll blog about it later this week.