I photographed this cover and feature story about recovery after the 2013 Moore tornado for Oklahoma Living in 2014. It was a fairly simple setup and the background was going to be “busy” for a cover photo. One trick to isolate your subject when you have a busy background is to use depth of field to pop the subject from the background. In this case I used one of my favorite lenses to do this – my Nikon 85 1.4 AFS is an awesome piece of glass that does a fantastic job of isolating my subject from this busy construction background. I had to really watch my focus points and make sure my subjects were on the same plane of focus. If one person had been standing even a few inches forward or behind the others this would not have worked. A bit of wind and a bit of light from an off-camera strobe helps give the scene a bit of pop. I brought my own props for the shoot, including the hard hat, saw, shovel, and drill.
