The Goodman’s Blog: Lifelong Learning and Sharing

They had been dancing non-stop for an hour, during a videoshoot for a tourism promotion documentary in Bangkok. The police were kind enough to allow me to shoot close.

After playing back the image, I knew I had to do something to the background, as it was distracting attention from the two dancers. I used Gaussian blur. However, it was difficult to do the blurring properly, as I was using the mouse instead of a stylus and I was getting impatient doing it. So you’ll see parts where the blurring was not so good.

Lesson for amateurs: When doing photo-editing, be relaxed and don’t take it too seriously. It’s only a hobby, not a livelihood!

This Rembrandt tulip was taken at Keukenhof last spring. I used a zoom lens, at a focal length of 360 mm (at 35 mm film equivalent). Because it was a bright afternoon, I knew I could use a smaller aperture (f11) and a slower speed to keep the centre of attention sharp. As usual, I mounted my camera on a tripod to minimise camera shake.

I was not quite satisfied with the bare image. So I decided to create a digital frame, taking a colour sample from the dark purple section of the tulip bulb. The white background surrounding the photo made the entire scene look nicer, in my opinion.

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.