Category: Candid

Candid, people photography

Trolley Service


The Steven Spielberg-directed movie, “The Terminal”, inspired me to try my hand at taking some candid shots at the Singapore Changi Airport last weekend. Indoor shooting was however much more challenging due to the dimmer lighting conditions which necessitated using higher ISO settings, slower shutter speeds and wider apertures. These all led to a compromise on noise-levels, sharpness and the ability to freeze decisive moments.

For this shot, the interesting patterns of the floor tiles together with the unusual lighting first caught my eye. Setting up my tripod to await passers-by to add a human-element to the pictures I would take, this maintenence man who was collecting used baggage trolleys pushed his load right into the camera frame. Seizing the moment, I snapped a shot only to find that sharpness was lacking due to motion blurring as a result of the slow shutter speed I was forced to use. Worse still, the picture appeared very grainy since I was forced to push the ISO setting up to 800!

All this was a pity since I liked especially the composition and setting of the shot. Not wanting to waste the shot, I decided to do some Photoshop-work on it. The result you see here is a combination a usage of the smudge-tool (to give a brushed art feel to the shot), solarisation, and application of a canvas-texture to the final picture.

First Class Portering


I was at Terminal 2 of the Singapore Changi Airport yesterday morning trying something different for a change — indoor people photography — when I came across these porters busy helping ferry baggage for the first class air-travellers. The reflections of the patterns off the floor contrasting with the silhouettes of the porters caught my eye. I like the grid-like floor patterns and the saturated reflections which, together with the strong silhouettes, provide visual interest to the whole shot.

Under Construction


While going through my collection of pictures in updating/revamping my photoblog here, I came across an image of a construction worker that I took at the Singapore Management University construction site at Bras Basah Road in March earlier this year. The original image had a the worker placed against a bland, white sky. In tribute to the diazochrome technique that my father pioneered earlier in his photographic career, I have turned the background to a deep, saturated blue in similar style, albeit made much easier with the use of Photoshop now. I like the cacophony of colours created between the contrast of the deep blue, versus the orange, fiery colours of the beams, scaffolding as well as the helmet of the worker. The expression on the worker’s face provided a touch of human interest to the shot.