It was day two of the ‘Creating Dramatic Images’ workshop, and while Dave Nightingale was busy indulging the delegates with a wealth of technical information, I caught this scene out of the corner of my eye. I simply couldn’t resist snapping the frame. The hotel we were in was home to the North’s line dancing fraternity for the weekend, and it seemed extremely popular—there was a serious amount of thigh-slapping going on!

I loved the quiet contrast of this moment: a solitary figure in a cowboy hat, framed by the heavy curtains of the hotel window, looking out at the world. It felt like a brief, reflective pause amidst the energetic chaos of the dance floor. To capture it, I reached for the Canon EF17-40mm f4 L Series. Zoomed to 32mm, it allowed me to include the curtains as a natural frame, creating a sense of “looking in” on a private thought.

I shot this wide open at f/4 to keep the focus strictly on the subject and the rain-streaked glass, while an ISO of 250 gave me a fast enough shutter speed of 1/320 second to keep the silhouette sharp against the bright exterior light. There are elements of the framing I’d change if I were to do it again, but I definitely prefer this tighter crop to the full-frame original—it makes the story feel much more intentional.

Processing this through Photoshop CS3 and Lightroom 2 allowed me to lean into the dramatic, high-contrast look that the workshop was all about. It’s funny how these “gap” moments—the ones you grab when you aren’t even the one teaching—often end up being the most rewarding.

• taken|17 september, 2011
• camera|Canon EOS 5D
• focal length|32mm
• aperture|f/4
• shutter speed|1/320s
• iso|250
• flash fired|no
• exposure bias|1 ev