“Are We There Yet?”
I wasn’t too hopeful when I headed down to the Singapore River Regetta this afternoon with Dad, Mum and CY in tow after lunch. The skies were looking dark and forbidding and it had rained earlier in the day.
All this feeling of inhibition was let go immediately when I got there, though. Although a few drops of rain did try to break through the cloudy skies, I was soon absorbed taking pictures from a nice vantage point on Elgin Bridge over the Singapore River. All in all, I spent close to 4 hours at the area taking shot after shot of the dragon-boat races taking place then, while putting up with an extremely sarcastic riverside commentator / race starter, who nitpicked non-stop on the participating dragon-boaters. This is one of the favourite shots from the session… More to follow 🙂
Exposure information: Camera – Canon EOS 20D, Lens – Canon EF 70-200mm f/4 L, Shutter speed – 1/125 sec, Aperture – f/6.3, ISO – 400, Focal length – 100mm, Exposure mode – Aperture Priority, Flash – Off, Filter – Hoya Circular Polarizer
After posting this, I took a look at the picture and thought some of you might comment that the face of the “turned-around-dragon-boater” is too central. Personally, I believe if I were to have placed him off center obeying the tradiational “rule-of-thirds”, it would have broken the balance and composition of the shot formed by the diagnoally-placed dragon boat. So in this case, I think breaking that golden rule is an acceptable option.
Haha, i wasn’t going to talk about the “turn around dragon boater”, instead, i was going to commend you for on the decisive moment. I’m amaze at how you managed to capture this moment because you actually got a candid shot and did trhe framing of the boat. The lighting/colour contrast due to the overclouded skies was in your favour – beautiful saturation.
Thanks jcyrhs 🙂 If I remember correctly, it helped that he turned around not only once, but twice. This is the second of two shots that I managed to grab in that instant. Of course the second one has a better composition 🙂 I think the saturation was also helped in part by the use of the polarising filter. I am just thankful that the 20D I’m using is almost noise-less at ISO 400 — that ISO setting helped to compensate for the loss of two stops of shutter speed incurred by the filter.
Marvellous colour!