The Self Critic Shutterbug

Av: F/3.7; Tv: 0.006s(1/160); f: 63mm (35mm-equiv:380 mm); ISO: 140

This is one of my favourite “people” photos. I took this when I had gone into a dumpyard to take some other photos for a topic I was working on. This was actually a spontaneous shot. I was preparing to take the photo of the girl when she got conscious and started running. I just clicked a few shots, following her path – did not even see the bird. Only after seeing the photos at home did I see the bird.

This photo did not have the same effect in colour as it has in Black and White. I tweaked around a little in Photoshop – increasing the contrast, cropping the image, added a little more shadows to get the final outcome.

• Strong points about this photo would include the way in which this photo shows a poor little rag-picking girl enjoys her play in her make-shift play-ground ie the dumping yard. This photo also has a dynamic quality, because it shows the subjects with a hint of motion blur. This was because of the fading twilight present at the time I clicked this.

• Having said that, this photo has plenty of drawbacks. A picture with better clarity would make this photo of higher standing. And although, the motion blur is good, if there was more focus on parts of the girl and the bird, it would have been better.

Tags: Bird, Black and white, Dump, Girl, Waste

Av: F/8; Tv: 5s; f: 6.3mm (35mm-equiv:38 mm); ISO: 80

I am a fan of black and white photography because I feel it brings out a lot more depth and meaning to the photo when compared to a similarly-shot coloured one. That was exemplified in this photo, in fact. I originally shot it in colour mode, but as soon as I tried it in B & W in Photoshop, my mind was set on using B & W for this snap.

Coming to the process of taking this snap :

I started this photo shoot with the idea of taking a snap of a busy traffic light from a high altitude with the trail-of-lights effect. So, I used a tripod and that gave me the liberty to bump up the shutter speed to as high as 5 seconds which resulted in the beautiful trail of headlights showing a bustling and dynamic look to the traffic.

I achieved the stars-around-the-light effect by the least possible F-value (or Aperture value) with my Kodak DX 7590 which is F/8.

Next the fine tunings with Adobe Photoshop CS3 – Along with conversion to B & W, I also worked around with the levels to adjust contrast & brightness to achieve pitch black in the dark areas and thus highlighting the lights. I cropped off the sides to position the photo better and avoid the mess of the numerous banners.

Some of the things I would love to improve in this snap :

The lighting from the lamp post should have been better defined, with a star-effect around it as well.

Tags: B&W