A good friend with his baby daughter, 5 April 2009.

The baby's mother loves the direct and very vital connection between the baby's rapt gaze and the father's smiling face and she's totally right.  I also like the apparently huge size of the father's hand as it rests on his daughter's diminutive shoulder.

I don't have a lot of confidence with people pictures, but luck has won out here – and this sort of close, intimate shot is one of the things that, for me, monochrome is all about.

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Technique: D700 with 105mm Nikkor lens; 6400 ISO.  I was very new to both digital photography and the D700 when I took this, and I have a vague recollection of frantically raising the ISO to 6400 to keep pace with the faltering light conditions, and of then setting matrix metering and trusting to autofocus – with a lucky outcome!