Natalia, Drink and Click Portrait – Austin, Texas

For this last portrait of this series, I feature Natalia, who I also featured in a ring light portrait about a week ago. Since I’m using a Fuji camera without any image stabilization, I need a good light source for my night portraits. They can be from softboxes which I used to light the two previous portraits. But today, something a bit more environmental.

There was an unused pool table at the bar begging for a portrait session. I asked Natalia if she was interested. The overhead light is not the ideal portrait lighting but certainly adequate for a good exposure. And, the scene at the pool table makes for a different setting. I could have brightened the background to show the surrounding walls but opted not to. I preferred the simple dark background over an uninspiring room.

Unlike my Olympus PEN-F, which I shoot in black and white mode, I shoot the Fuji in color. But, over the years, I’ve honed my black and white post-processing to mimic my favorite parts of the PEN-F monochrome. In theory, I should be able to reproduce this style of black and white with any RAW file. That frees me from relying just on Olympus PEN-F. But, I’ll always be thankful for how the PEN-F changed and influenced my monochrome photography.

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