LightningPaul

Last weekend we had the second edition of the Beer Festival in Brugge, organized by BAB. Two hundred different kinds of beer. I Only managed to taste 5% of it, so I'm waiting for the edition of next year :-)

You buy a drinking glass of 15cl and a bunch of beer coins. With these you can try one or more beers of every participating brewery. It's lots of fun and a fantastic way to find out new kinds of beers and tastes. Here you see someone tapping my beer. This man clearly loves his job. He executes and explains everything with lots of passion. It was very nice talking to him and capturing him with my camera while enjoying his beer.


TECH-INFO: The lighting conditions were extremely bad. If there were any lamps then they produced very artificial light. I shot RAW files because it was too hard to get the right white balance at the event. The other reason was that I needed maximum amount of data to correct and pull up the exposure. Using a speedlight flash in my hand, a technique I adore, it would have been the best but I was already holding my beer glass in that hand.
I set the my camera on ISO 800, which produces still acceptable results (ISO 1600 is too bad), especially considering the situation. The lens was a Nikon 50mm f/1.4 AF-D which I set on aperture f/2.0. If this lens is wider open than it is too soft and too hard to get the right place in focus.
DxO Optics Pro was used for RAW conversion, setting the correct white balance, reducing noise and lens softness and pulling up the exposure. Afterwards I used the burning and dodging technique with adjustment layers in Photoshop elements to brighten up  the man on the image.
I really hope you like the result too.