The Ascent

I imagined this outcome as soon as I had Riley in my viewfinder.

She wore a long, white night gown. She stood tall, on her tip-toes, sideways to me. As I focused on her, Riley leaned her head back, her arms extending out from her body.

It was done in a swift motion—motion was the theme of this meetup—so I had to be fast. And as I pressed the shutter release, I knew what I wanted to do with the image.

Obviously, I was going to edit the photo in black and white. A black backdrop was our canvas and she was dressed in white. Only her reddish-brown hair offered any colour.

Riley looked as though she could have been ascending into the sky. Indeed, had we used a spotlight above her, I would have taken advantage of it, accentuated it in the final image, as though it was a beam from a spaceship, lifting her upward.

(I'm sure that I could have added one, artificially, but that was too much work and would ultimately detract from Riley, who was the only subject I wanted.)

A couple of weeks ago, I explained how I achieved a look with another photo of Riley, when she wore an orange skirt. I don't need to go through the steps again, and I used almost all of those steps, except for when I masked the skirt so that I could retain the colour while rendering the model in black and white.

When I had Riley looking as I envisioned, I only needed to make it look like she was at some height. To achieve that look, I added more canvas beneath her.

What do you think?

I have many more photos that I captured during this photo shoot and I'll share them over the coming weeks. I have images of Riley dancing, of her moving whilst my camera shot at slow speed, and of her motion whilst a strobe light flashed several times during one shot.

Stay tuned.

And... well... okay, I did do an AI rendering of Riley, ascending to a UFO, just for the fun of it. Of course, I prefer the black-and-white image.

Happy Friday!