Another in my never-ending experiment with what could probably only very loosely be called street photography, this picture is (I assume) about two generations of people: a woman and her mother enjoying the shade near a pond on a very hot summer day. It’s less of a true street photo and more of an observational image, and another in a long series of attempts by me to capture a thin slide of humanity. I’m not even sure I like it very much, but it was the result of me going outside with my camera to just try something and since that’s the point of this blog in the first place I thought I’d post it.
I didn’t make a lot of technical choices here, and instead tried to focus on composition and framing. I saw these two women when I was out for a brief stroll and thought it would make an interesting image (except for the giant tree trunk on the left-hand side, which was unfortunate but unavoidable) so I put my camera in aperture priority and ISO 200, and crouched down low to get this shot. You can’t really tell from looking at it but the ground sloped up to where I was positioned, so a picture taken from my standing eye level would have looked pretty much like a throwaway snapshot. In retrospect I wish I would have used shutter priority or manual mode in order to get a slower shutter and some cool motion blur on the fountain, so I’ll try to keep that in mind next time I’m in this type of situation.
What are the two women thinking about? Why are they on the bench? Are they even related? I don’t know, and nor do I really want to. I like to think this is about two generations sharing a moment of peace, and while that could be far from the truth it does make me smile. And Julie R., if you’re reading this I hope it brings a grin to your face too ;)
David W. Knight says
Simon —
What a nice way to begin the day! So, pictures like this are to be used as a tool to sharpen our skills as a photographer? Framing; composition; aperture; and, shutter speed. Indeed, analyzing our photos critically will make us much better photographers. I like this approach. Giving more thought to the story we want to tell, and how best to tell it, moves photography into the realm of creating art. Headed to Waco for a case tomorrow, going to take that D7100 and see what I can capture!
Simon says
Thanks for the comment, Dave, and I’m sorry it took so long for me to respond! That’s what taking ten days off for a family vacation will do :) I hope you had a nice trip to Waco and got some good shots with your D7100!
And to address your question…yeah, I think so. I like to re-examine photos like this to see how I handled the framing, composition, etc. and see if there are things I might do differently next time.