As promised, this is the vertical version of “Frozen In Tranquility”. Between the two shots, this was my favourite one initially. However, I am beginning to find the horizontal one more appealing. This one has the ‘orange bit’ cloned out for a change. Of course, the contrast and saturation was boosted up significantly to achieve this final look. Which one do you like better?
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“.
These two ducks were having a comfortable time resting on the sign in the middle of the Symphony Lake at the Botanical Gardens. I was wondering how to capture the humour of the scene as cleanly as possible — there were just too many distracting subjects (kids running around, trees, pavements) in the background. Adopting a low angle may have helped a little (as Dad was pointing out to the group of students with us). I took another solution: I incorporated the path in the distance with an isolated group of passers-by to tell a funny story instead. The ducks were made the main focus of the story by keeping them sharp relative to the rest of the picture.