Ric Hines: A Senior Profile Portrait by Alexander Barnes (2015)

The star of my portrait is Ric Hines, a singer and manager for two successful local bands. Throughout his life, Ric has been indulged in music, concentrating most of his effort to learning and improving during his twenties and thirties. He is based in the South Bay Area, and although he is a jukebox singer, someone who can sing in any genre, his focus lies on blues, country, big band, and classic rock.

To create this photo, I positioned Ric in front of a fence and has him sit to keep his body movement minimal. With the clouds blocking the sun and the low lighting of late afternoon, I had to use a large aperture and long shutter speed to keep the image sharp. Also, I used an external flash unit which enabled me to even out the shadows on his face. After I took the shot, I imported the image into photoshop and adjusted the white balance, contrast, and brought out detail on his shirt by lowering the amount of blacks in the image. I then cut him out from the background, straightened the fence vertically and applied a slight blur to it in order to add focus to Ric. Finally, I applied a slight high-pass filter, which digitally sharpened the image, and added color correction to make the browns and neutrals stand out.