The Goodman’s Blog: Lifelong Learning and Sharing

She was a participant in an annual parade in Singapore called Chingay, held during the Chinese New Year period. Her dress and hat were full of flowers.

She was sandwiched in a group of 50 other participants. Instead of shooting her with the others, I approached her and asked if she could step out of the group and I then asked her to pose alone.

While I was “directing” her poses, many other event photographers rushed to my photoshoot location and started snapping her. I was fortunate, though, that she only took instructions from me and gamely posed.

I’m so lucky.

I had arrived early at a month-end open-air Thai classical dance concert in Bangkok. There was a mini-fair on local handicrafts and delicacies. I spotted two ladies wearing festive costumes and doing embroidery. I approached the owner of their stall for permission to take their photos.

Although my spoken Thai  is pathetic, my “model” instinctively understood me and stopped her work for a while while I moved around her, looking for her best angle. We were inside a white tent. I used the tent as the background.

Once I started photo-editing, I played around with various layouts. I decided to focus on her head which was adorned with silk flowers and earrings. I then changed the colour of the white tent to a light lavander by taking a sample from the silk flowers.

Above, you can see my outputs at different stages of production.

I hope you like the final outcome. 

As I view this again, Ono Lisa’s bossa nova version of ‘Smile” is playing in my mind.

I had just finished taking photos of my wife at this spot. This young lady, with her aunt, asked me to take her photo with her camera. I said yes but provided she allowed me to take her photo as well on my camera. I had to direct her, including telling her to sit down and how she should place her hands and made her smile again and again.

No need to guess which country she was from–the sportshirt and her sweet smile said it all.

I took this shot with the usual rule-of-thirds in mind. Other than that, I did not attempt any other technique. Sometimes, we examine a photo to assess the photographer’s technical artistry when what we should be looking at simply is the content.

I hope this photo makes you smile as well.