In all my years of traveling, there are three portraits I've taken that I would put in the 'outrageous' category. In the next couple of days I'll post the other two, but this shot from Ethiopia stands out in my mind as being number one. This is a woman of the Mursi tribe, and these people are famous for wearing huge lip plates that deter enemy tribes from kidnapping the women. I asked this lady to move into the shade of a tree because, even though my photo tour group arrived at the village for sunrise, I preferred the diffused light. I used a piece of black velvet for the background, and even though that removed her from the village environment, it forces all our attention on the subject with no distractions. My settings were 1/20, f/11, and 640 ISO. I used a tripod and a 24-105mm lens. I was uncomfortable using such a slow shutter when photographing a person, even on a tripod, but this was taken a few years ago with a Canon 5D Mark II, and I wanted to minimize the noise by using a low ISO. Tomorrow I'll post outrageous portrait number two.
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