Prompt
· English
Shoulder-level view at a natural standing height, a little to one side, of a 47-year-old woman alone on the spiral stairwell of a lighthouse, looking out through the curved glass lens room at a dark ocean horizon, her hand resting on the cold iron railing. She is blushing and laughing in embarrassment, one hand on the back of the neck, of Southern African descent with warm caramel-brown skin and a soft heavyset build of average height. She has a long narrow face, amber eyes, thin fine eyebrows, and fine pin-straight hair dyed deep teal in a buzz cut, wrapped in a patterned headscarf, wearing a navy-and-white striped long-sleeve shirt and khaki chinos. A cracked ink bottle rests on a shelf in the background, salt spray is dried into white streaks on the glass panes, and the heavy wooden door of the lens room is slightly ajar. The main figure is framed by an arch inside the picture. Direct on-camera flash at night creates a bright foreground and a black background. Shot on a macro lens a few centimetres from the surface with a razor-thin plane of focus, resulting in sharp detail on the immediate foreground elements and a soft, blurred background with high contrast lighting.
