永浴爱河
When we first arrived at the Botanical Gardens for our last outing, I spotted these two ducks right in the middle of Symphony Lake, just nicely lit by a spot of warm sunlight. They were unfortunately out of the full reach of my 70-200mm f/4 L for me to take any close-up shots. I decided to adopt a wider perspective approach instead, composing the ducks against the surounding water and the background of lotus flowers. I did partial metering on the ducks, which helped to throw the surrounding background into a nice, deep colour. I have done further post-processing in Photoshop to darken and slightly desaturate the background of lotus flowers. I think this picture will look good as a super-large print hung on a wall — there are lots of details here missing in this version resized for the web 🙂
The title for this one was contributed by CY’s mum 🙂 To those who can’t read Chinese, it means literally “forever bathed in the river of love“.
nice title. 🙂
The ducks seem lost in the wide angle, maybe a slightly closer crop would be nice.
I agree with ashwin, the ducks are unable to hold the attention in the love river.
The title-ing abilities seem to run in the blood. Yong yu ai he…. i love it.
Thanks guys 🙂
This was the closest I could get with 200mm. Cropping would be an option, however I have always believed in using full-frame where possible (a cropped version will definitely be limited by resolution if I decide at some time to enlarge the picture for hanging). There are a lot of details missing in this resized version for the web. I think these details will likely make the picture stand out if I can blow it up to 24 by 16. Perhaps it’s time for me to consider getting an extender for the 70-200mm … 😉
Aptly titled. I can see the point about the cropping but the photo works for me in that the eye has to work a bit to find the focal point of the photo, but once it does, is quite satisfying.
lovely work Eng Loy. I like the negative space of this composition. Reminds of chinese paintings.
Thanks james and paul 🙂