Simplicius wrote:DEATH wrote:And an unusually ugly woman.
If ugliness is good enough for da Vinci or Rembrandt, there's no reason for you to shun it. Your pursuit is of the
interesting.
Exactly. Hence my taking the photo of the immensely fat, chalk white woman.
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Simplicius wrote: Frankly, had the woman been attractive the photo would have been dull; as-is, the effect is of an aging and decadent queen of an ancient kingdom. Much more interesting.
No matter how much you sweet talk me, i'm still not going to let you into my underwater fortress when peak oil hits
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Yes, unfortunately she was in the middle of a very crowded auditorium and surrounded by people. The only way to "clear up some negative space" would have been to get up right next to her and to shoot up her nose. (Which would have required asking and whatnot).
Also, taken at 300mm.
As I figured. Still, considering you are shooting at maximum range in the middle of a crowd it is good work to get studio-like photos.
I'm curious as to what Israel's laws on the matter are. It seems odd that privacy would be so stringently protected in a public place, as opposed simply to ownership of one's likeness restricting publication. In that case, you could shoot first and ask permission to publish after.
Israel allows photos for non commercial uses of people, etc' in public places or areas in which "it does not violate an unreasonable level of privacy".
This was irrelevant here, since it's a private area, and I was working for the conventioneers renting out the upper floor of the place. (So I shot first, asked later. Usually, in the cases of babies or hot chicks I asked first
).
Yeah. I was unsure about the composition in this shot, I have a second version that moves up and to the left a bit, leaving neck dude sliced at the neck. It's tighter, but the man in the bottom right (neck dude) is really what makes this shot. Is it better this way, do you think?
No, I don't think the second version would be an improvement. Not only is the bug-eyed guy the punchline of the photo, he's also the visual anchor because he is in the foreground and in focus. You shouldn't cut any of the crowd either because the sea of bored faces in the background is the set-up to the joke. It's the space at the bottom that does it, I think; the content of the photo is basically diagonal from upper left to lower right, but when you reach the guy's face you've hit the edge of the frame - the end of the photo - even though there's still about a third hanging down below with nothing in it. You might be able to crop up to the guy's T-shirt sleeve without lessening the effect.
Mmmm. Yeah, it's odd how the composition (diagonal line) worked out well there without any planning or framing. Just luck I guess.
The place was waaay too crowded. Crowds everywhere, it was almost impossible to get a body shot without a mass of bodies in the background. Nevermind the very weak, bright yellow light that it enjoyed (it makes WB adjustments futile, the skin colour is naturally "anemic lemon yellow") .
I used my external flash, but frankly, i'm rather bad with it and dislike it (give me available light shooting anyday), and the limits of my manipulations were angling the bounce and stopping the flash's strength down. Didn't help much.
A diffuser might be helpful, then. If you've got plastic milk jugs or any other kind of white semi-opaque plastic you could cut a hood for your flash out of it.
Yeah, I keep meaning to try to make one, maybe out of some white carton, as well as wanting to build a sealed black box for taking potential item photos. Curse my lack of mechanical/arts and crafts skills! (Well, that and my being a horrible procrastinator).
I will try a sock though, or a pantyhose next time, if I can find one that's fine and thin. (We don't have plastic milk cartons, biodegradable carton here in Jewland
), that might work well (And would be more stable than a cut-out).
I did carry it around by hand actually. For 2 days straight. My hands were amazingly sore from that. (Stupid weight! Stupid flash! Accursed push/pull zoom!).
It is Image stabilized though, for 4,000$ worth of lense it has just about everything you could want. (Except for carryability). The performance and zoom were just amazing though, especially for someone used to a whirry Sigma with focus issues. Not worth the price, or the weight but that's just me.
If it doesn't suit your shooting style, then no, it's not worth it. If you shot wildlife or airshows, you'd definitely need that much lens, though.
Nah, 70/75-300 would work, a 100-400 or 70-200 with a teleconverter if really serious for a "Serious" zoom. The 18-200 is nice, but the more I actually use other lenses, the more I realize just how crap it is (and how bad F 6.3 is for action at a distance).
As a "do anything" lens, it's amazing, but not worth the price/weight in my opinion. Better to get a digital only lens that's cheaper, has a similiar focal length and a fraction of the price. (Not to mention waaaaay less weight).
Also - a throw zoom over that focal length? Heh, that is nuts.
Yup. It's a nice idea in theory "Zoom closer by moving your hands closer! What could be more natural????", but a bitch in something that heavy. I know Canon's other "superzoom" (100-400L) is also a push/pull, but i've never touched one.
Do you have any good books on crowd photos? Almost all the shots I took of groups were crap, though that might be due to the clutter in the backgrounds. It worked better when I focused on individuals, but there has to be more to it than that, no?
I don't, as it's not a style of photography I have tried yet. But street photography is popular and you can find people talking about it on the Internet without much trouble at all. There's a photojournalistic aspect to it that makes it easy to find acclaimed photographers to emulate as well.
Yeah, I've tried street photography a lot back when I wandered Tel-Aviv often, but it's tricky. You need good people skills and a lot of gusto to do anything interesting with it without getting into trouble, and i'm rather more cautious than most people give me credit for. (So, no award winning documentaries on junky dens or beggars for me).
Beggars are remarkably photogenic though, with all that hair
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My opinion as a viewer of photographs is that to shoot an actual crowd as opposed to an individual in it, you really have to treat a crowd as a jumbled mass of things and then look for some sort of movement or pattern within it to make a photo around. Singling out individuals is easier because the viewer can relate to a portrait of a person. A crowd has none of that intimacy, so without the human connection helping you out you have to find other sources of visual and emotional appeal.
So, the essence remains "find something small to focus on". Small DoF really is a favoured tool for photographers, huh?
. (I mean it's based from the same school of thought).
Also, 5 more photos:
More of a closeup (300 mm FTW) - The DoF was too lacking for my tastes here.
IMG_1948
This one smacked of dead space to me, hence my uplaoding a version where more of the body (of the player and the violin) is shown.
Show-50
IMG_1950
See what I meant about the light?
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Show-20
Stardust-132
Devil!
I deliberately left the "Red Eye" in. Suits it, no?