Hawaiian Dancer

The strength of this photography composition comes from the separation of the dancer's face from the background, which is due to the quality of light and the large aperture of the lens.

She is facing directly into a low afternoon sun, maybe 45 minutes before sunset. This accounts for the warmth of the light on her face. The intensity of the light allowed for a very fast 1/3200 second shutter speed at f/2.8. That was more than fast enough to assure a crisp image from the handheld camera.

The other benefit of a large aperture is the quality of the out-of-focus areas of the image. The lens I was using, a Nikkor 70-200mm, is known for its smooth bokeh. The pale orange and green areas at center and right are actually a wall and window of a hotel. Due to the quality of the lens' bokeh, these areas have been sufficiently blurred as to not interfere with the subject.

This image has one characteristic that limits its use to only Web or electronic picture frame display. It's file size is too small. This is because I had cropped it from a 12 megapixel image (4288 x 2848 pixels) to just over a half-megabyte (817 x 613 pixels), and that was before sizing it for the Web page. See the original image here.

This works for the Web, but you can't get a decent, good-sized print from the reduced file size. But, hey, this IS a Web site, so I can get away with it...

While I'm quite happy with this shot, I am trying to decide whether or not it would have worked better had I been shooting from an angle more level with the dancer's face. Or, does this lower angle give her more strength of character?