Every photograph has a story...
Ana and the Green Machine
This photograph is a pretty recent portrait I captured of Ana, a very talented model I've worked with a number of times. The concept for the shoot was a classic car theme, and in this image I had Ana sitting in a modified green 1967 Shelby Mustang GT350 that Bruce generously made available to us for the shoot. His '67 Shelby Mustang is really something... with that '60s muscle car shape and its aggressive stance.
For this particular image, I really wanted to use the car's green paint to frame Ana. The color of the Mustang was what drew my eye. Its metallic green surrounds the model, wrapping around and framing her.
This was a bright summer day at a local forest preserve, and we were shooting around golden hour. I purposely positioned Ana so that she was backlit by the late afternoon sun. The paint picks up reflections of the world around it—the streaks of yellow and yellow-green give the green an almost luminous quality. The model's deep red lipstick provides an especially strong accent to the greens. Red and green are complementary colors, so there is a natural visual tension between them. The result is a color harmony that makes the model feel naturally embedded in the scene while still drawing your eye directly to her face.
For me, that's part of what makes the composition work in this image. The car isn't simply the setting for the portrait. Its color, reflections, curves, and even the racing numbers become part of the visual frame. Everything leads back toward the model, with the red of her lips providing that small but powerful point of contrast.
I shot the image with an 85mm prime at f/2.2. The 85mm is my favorite lens for portraits because it gives me enough working distance to capture the environment without letting it overpower the subject. Shooting at f/2.2 helped separate Ana from some of the background while keeping enough of the car recognizable as an important part of the image.
What I really like about this photograph is that the Mustang and Ana don't feel like two separate subjects. The car provides the color, shape, reflections, and attitude, while Ana provides the warmth and human element. Together they create something that feels very different from a straightforward portrait of either one by itself.
