Christina

Many would not consider a 300mm lens to be an ideal portrait lens,

but I honestly prefer it. That and my 180mm f/ 2.8 AIS Nikkor. The

long focal length throws the background way out of focus, which

isolates the subject from the background. My wife walked alongside

her and held a fill flash which was tripped wirelessly.

Beautiful B&W "portrait", Scott ... (and a very pretty wife also) ... excellent use of lights here. I love to use a 300 mm lens too. (6) Kind regards

I agree about the larger focal distance lens for portraiture. I use my 300 mm as you do, but the lens I do prefer is the 135mm (200 mm film equivalence) F2.8, it's more luminous and flexible under poor light conditions. Here you did a beautiful job with a clever use of lightning. Congratulations to both of you.

Very nice portrait; everything you did with the focal length and light came together very well.

Thanks Carlos, my 180mm f/2.8 ED AIS is pretty much my standard outdoor portrait lens, unless space is at a premium then I go down to my 105 f/1.8 AIS. It is very rare I drop down the to 85mm f/1.4 AIS outdoors. I love the bokeh of both the 180mm and 105mm and the shallow depth of field 1 stop down on both does a great job of throwing the background way out of focus.

I really did not notice until I reviewed the image on the computer that her sundress had a somewhat "see through" appearance to it. I thought about darkening it to make it appear less transparent but decided against it because it shows off her very pretty figure very tastefully.

Oh and Ricardo, my wife was holding the strobe, the woman in the sundress was just the model! She is less than half mine and my wife's age but my wife looked that good when she was that age too though!

Scott ... forgive my mistake ... I´m sure your wife is so beautiful as the model. Regards to both of you and congrats again ... 

You have nailed it here...I really like the long lens and plan to experiment more with this technique for portraits...great idea using an assistant to make up for the distance from the subject.  This would have been a terrible image to expose if you didn't use fill flash...as it is the balance is perfect.  I really like how the back light from the sun rims her arms and shoulders and how her semi translucent dress glows to reveal a hint of her figure.  Very nice averted gaze...a very evocative pose.  I also like your choice of B&W here...very effective...overall a great capture.

Scott, the tasteful "see-through dress" was one of the aspects of the photo that I really like.