Category: Candid

Candid, people photography

Bon Voyage


This silhouette study was taken at the Changi International Airport’s viewing gallery in Terminal 1 as part of the series of pictures that I took two weekends ago during my visit there. I was attracted by the strong silhouettes of the visitors contrasting with the bright sunshine outside on the tarmac, as well as the patterns of light and shadow created by the floor tiles.

Surfing Knights Of The Round Table

More pictures from the series I took at the Changi Airport…

This is actually a Internet cafe/surfing station at McDonald’s in Terminal 2. The escalator landing from the floor above provided a good vantage point for me to capture the actions of net surfers (mostly children on that lazy Sunday morning!). I like the arrangement of the people around the high-tech looking table and setting. Taken with a slow shutter speed with the camera mounted on a tripod.

Trolley Service


The Steven Spielberg-directed movie, “The Terminal”, inspired me to try my hand at taking some candid shots at the Singapore Changi Airport last weekend. Indoor shooting was however much more challenging due to the dimmer lighting conditions which necessitated using higher ISO settings, slower shutter speeds and wider apertures. These all led to a compromise on noise-levels, sharpness and the ability to freeze decisive moments.

For this shot, the interesting patterns of the floor tiles together with the unusual lighting first caught my eye. Setting up my tripod to await passers-by to add a human-element to the pictures I would take, this maintenence man who was collecting used baggage trolleys pushed his load right into the camera frame. Seizing the moment, I snapped a shot only to find that sharpness was lacking due to motion blurring as a result of the slow shutter speed I was forced to use. Worse still, the picture appeared very grainy since I was forced to push the ISO setting up to 800!

All this was a pity since I liked especially the composition and setting of the shot. Not wanting to waste the shot, I decided to do some Photoshop-work on it. The result you see here is a combination a usage of the smudge-tool (to give a brushed art feel to the shot), solarisation, and application of a canvas-texture to the final picture.