In the recent group competition, ‘In Costume’, Mervyn Daly ran out the deserved winner with his image with the ‘Tears of a Clown’ theme.

Learn how Mervyn, who is becoming a fixture on the winner’s podium, put this shot together here:

“I had an idea of creating an image with a ‘Tears of a Clown’ theme. I convinced (bribed) my daughter, Tara , to model for me, telling her what I was trying to create and getting her ideas also”.

“I began by setting up a white backdrop which was lit by a 200w Elinchrom light at half power on the left, a 400w Elinchrom light at full power on the right. I metered and got a reading of 1/125sec @ f8, ISO200”.

“I got out the make-up from my wife and Tara’s stash and did the face painting and, when finished, I placed a folded sheet over her head and began shooting”.

“The image was cropped and levels and curves adjusted, I burned in a couple of spots on the background to remove some creases and then converted to b&w on a separate layer and selectively deleted around the mouth to expose the colour on original layer”.

“I shot with Nikon D300s, with sigma 17-70 2.8-4.5. @ 20mm. I used a reflective umbrella on the 200w head and a shoot through umbrella on the 400w head. Post processing was done in Photoshop CS2”.

Well done Mervyn and Tara on producing a wonderful shot.