Category: Monochrome

Black & white pictures

Walk, Stand And Sit

Walk, Stand And Sit
Another shot taken during Christmas Eve…

Long-exposure shots of crowds of people are one my of favourites because of the unpredictable nature of taking them. Some element of luck has to be present to catch an interesting shot. The above was taken at the steps leading up to Marina Square from the Esplanade Theatres. The steps are a throughfare for the crowds especially during the weekends and holiday seasons. I managed to get a combination of people walking, standing and sitting in this montage of three images taken with a tripod.

Elation

Elated
One of the tricks I have come across about taking pictures at a parade is not to focus your efforts on the parade/performance. Rather, try instead to look out for candid moments among the spectators of the parade…

This was what I did during the Colours of the World Parade at the Dreamworld theme park in Bangkok, Thailand. The reward was a shot capturing the spontaneous joy and elation of this boy watching the parade. I have adopted a monochrome approach to the final image since this made the boy stand out from the rest of the scene (because of the dark-coloured T-shirt he was wearing).

And in case you’ve missed them, don’t forget to see these other pictures I took from my Thailand trip: this is BAD, Ushering In The Compliments.

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One of the banes of using zoom-lenses is that of barrel-distortion at wide angles (especially for the cheaper/budget lenses). I came across a link to two interesting free software tools to correct these distortions: RadCor and PTLens (upon which RadCor is based). Digging out a shot that was previously badly affected by barrel-distortion, I tried out RadCor with impressive results. Additional Photoshop tinkering that led to the above image: Channel Mixer tweaking for the monochrome / IR look, followed by adding Noise for a slightly grainy look. Taken more than a year ago outside the ESPRIT shop at Raffles City.