Freestyle Academy proudly presents

Michael Smith: A Senior Profile Portrait by Rebecca Bettinger (2015)

The subject of the photo is Mr. Smith. He is an English teacher at Los Altos High School. His lively and energetic persona as well as his passion for learning has made him a student favorite. In this photo, he is sitting on a bench in front of a row of classrooms.

The trickiest part of shooting was finding the right location. Not wanting to use the dark insides of a classroom, we met three different times just walking around the entire campus trying to find good places to shoot. Some locations looked perfect for a photoshoot but soon were discovered to have terrible lighting. I also learned the value of the f-stop on the cameras. The f-stop separates your subject from your background. As a new and inexperienced photographer, I did not realize how important that function was. The same happened for the ISO function on the camera. I learned why one ends up with a grainy photo. Over the three times I met with my subject, each time I slowly improved somehow. The first time I did not know how to manage the f-stop. The second time I did not know how to focus. My skills with the camera definitely improved over time.
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