I do not believe it is true that the camera loves some people more than others. What I do believe is true is that some people are simply unafraid of being photographed, of the camera. It was obvious from the first shot that Rachel was one of those people. Even in color, every shot of her was good. It didn’t matter what face she made. That ability is a gift.

What is also true is that while I can see some images in my head before I take the shot, as with this image from Lake Hughes Road, there are many images that truly reveal themselves only during editing. The shot above is one of those. When I am lucky enough to capture one, I also consider that a gift.

The high-key result you see here is a combination of edits in different software programs. First, the color was corrected in Adobe Lightroom, then Luminar 4. Once I had a great color image, I then took that file into Silver Efex Pro 2 and used a custom edit of the Fine Art (High Key) filter. Then I further drew out the high-key elements in Adobe Photoshop. Of course, there is a whole science around high-key lighting, but this was a photo taken outside in natural light. It takes more work to get this result in that setting. In this case, I think the result was worth every second of the extra effort.