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John Curley is a former deputy managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. His images have appeared in the Chronicle, San Francisco Magazine, Diablo Magazine, Flavorpill and Sierra Magazine, among others. He also teaches at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.


 
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Back to the fire

July 12, 11:50 AM
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Dand and Karen


Environmental portraits can be your most moving and powerfully emotional photographs.

Take pictures of people in their element, doing the things they love to do, and you'll have the best chance of capturing what it is about them that makes them so unique.

Dan Dasmann and Karen Cusolito (above) were at the Fire Arts Festival in Oakland on Friday night with pieces of from their Passage sculpture, which has graced both Black Rock City and San Francisco's Embarcadero.

We used an on-camera flash for this shot, because setting up more elaborate system was just not possible. We took a reading of the ambient light and then dialed back a couple of exposure levels to keep the light true to the setting. We also turned down the exposure on the flash a couple of levels to make sure they didn't come out way too bright. We just wanted to fill their faces with soft light. (We also used a diffuser to help soften the fill light.)

We used the same basic method for Joy Busse, who was giving people a lift up to the top of the Steampunk Treehouse, and for Michal Sturtz, the impressario, entrepreneur and general honcho in charge of the Crucible operations.

Michael

 

Joy

 

 

Author: John Curley
John Curley is an Examiner from San Francisco. You can see John's articles on John's Home Page.
Find out more about John:
John Curley is a former deputy managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. His images have appeared in the Chronicle, San Francisco Magazine, Diablo Magazine, Flavorpill and Sierra Magazine, among others. He also teaches at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.
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