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.