Spur of The Moment

 Note: This article also failed to print earlier this month. 

 Spur Of The Moment

by William Lulow

Here’s a neat little shot that came up on the spur of the moment. I was on the beach photographing my own family and spotted this couple with two champagne flutes trying to get a sunset shot. I offered to do a photo for them. I set them up with the glasses kind of raised to the sunset. My idea was to capture the sunset in their glasses. Here’s the shot I obtained:

Now I haven’t had a chance to retouch it much, but what I will do when I get back to my full version of Photoshop is to increase the incandescense of the light in the glasses. In the meantime, it serves as a nice, intimate little shot. I sent it to the couple who had just actually become engaged and were trying to document the moment with their iPhone selfies, but were having trouble getting it just right.

Here is another version. It’s cropped in much tighter but still makes the point:

Again, it is pretty much what I had in mind when I saw the shot. The couple loved the idea and its execution. Here’s an enhanced version that I made after a little post-production work:

There are many opportunities like this during the course of our photographic lives. As I am fond of saying, all it takes is a little thought. Photography is less about taking pictures and more about seeing them in your own mind’s eye! Of course, it’s always nice to know how to translate your individual visions to the medium of photographs.