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.

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.