More Shots from the Hip

Here I am in The Eternal City. The place is full of Roman ruins, ancient statues, Renaissance art and armed police officers.

And the latter have handguns on their hips. I tried candid photographs at the airport, bu a combination of low light, fast movement and a desire not to be arrested produced blurred and generally useless pictures.

But here's one taken outside the Capitoline museums. There are thousands of cameras all around, and I was some distance away. Check out the minuscule depth of field.

Nikon D300s
Tamron 200-400 at 400mm
F/6.3
1/250
ISO 200

More bunnies to hug

So there I was in Dubai Mall. For once, camera in hand. Ironically, the shop was not "Lapin" (which is French for rabbit as any fule kno), but about two doors down. No grief; indeed actual approval from the nice lady in the shop, to take photos.

Nikon D300s
Nikkor 18-200 @ 80mm
1/30s & F/5.6
ISO Auto 1600

Shot with available light, this cute stuffed rabbit is poking out of a carrier bag as if it's about to be taken home and hugged by a small child. I wanted to blur the otherwise possible distraction in background, and I think I achieved this. The subject is a bit central, but a crop to put the rabbit to the left would have lost great chunks of carrier bag, and the subject would have been looking out of frame if it had been too far to the right. So bullseye it is. Tweaks are limited to cropping and just a little colour enhancement.

The light streaming in from the shop front looks, and indeed is, natural daylight.


Nikon D300s
Nikkor 18-200 @ 170mm
1/30s & F/5.6
ISO Auto 1400

This one is hopefully reminiscent of the shelf in a nursery. The huggable stuffed bunny is next to something "ABC"; as indicative of childhood as anything else available. I did not set anything up, which is why the irritating picture frame is in shot. Post-processing is limited to cropping, abut of colour palette enhancement and a small rotation.

The light is almost all artificial tungsten shop lights.


Nikon D300s
Nikkor 18-200 @ 112mm
1/30s & F/5.6
ISO Auto 560

This luminous rabbit should be suitably disturbing for small children.

Illuminated by tungsten house lights plus lit from within.

With all the shots, I used ISO Auto to control shutter speed to 1/30s in order to hand-hold the camera. This avoids both camera shake and the tripod police.

Paul's: With no rabbits

Tofu-knitting bunny-huggers... Well, I thought about this and decided that one interpretation was a theme of environmentalism. And seeking to emphasise the 'environment' rather than the 'mental' side, I took this:

Nikon D300s
Nikkor 18-200 @ 170mm
1/200s
F/5.6
ISO Auto

Nice bright colours to attract the environmentally responsible. It works too. As you see, at least one of the bins is full to overflowing.

I waited until the sun was low in the sky so that there would be some shadows, not that rectangular boxes offer much in the way of texture. I also shot the image low and close-cropped so that the blurred background was an unobtrusive plain wall in a fairly neutral colour.

While I was there, an actual environmentally responsible person turned up and posted a handful of newspapers for recycling.


Nikon D300s
Nikkor 18-200 @ 52mm
1/250s
F/4.8
ISO Auto

This was a quick candid shot, so the framing wasn't good; I missed the back of the car. The irony of going to recycle old copies of 7DAYS in a two-seater over-engined sports car was not lost on me. Every little helps, I suppose.


Enough of the environment. There is a different interpretation for this month's subject. As tofu is perhaps perceived as Japanese (at least in my house it is) I present an actual Tofu Knitter.

Nikon D300s
Nikkor 18-200 @ 48mm
1/30s
F/4.5
ISO Auto

Shot hand-held with available light at a well-known emporium of Japanese-style fast food, I was looking for a shot with the chef's hands blurred with the rapid movement associated with knitting tofu. Of a score or so attempts, this one had the man's face in focus with his eyes open and his hands suitably blurred. All the movement was done in camera. There is some PhotoShop: the background of square tiles was not quite parallel with the photo frame, but a little Free Transform sorted out that issue. I think the fan is a distraction, but it's real and authentic, and anyway I made a right mess of trying to clone it out.

Paul's UNIFORM...

...and just for once, nothing from the back catalogue.

I went out with the camera over to Dubai Mall with deliberate intent to find something Uniform to shoot.

Sweeties

Nikon D300s
Nikkor 18-200 @ 80mm
F/5 1/30s
ISO 1000 (ISO Auto)

Mindful of the Tripod Police and their ilk, this close-up took some timing. I had to wait until all the security guards had turned away from the uniform colours of M&Ms. The shot is tweaked slightly in Photoshop to remove converging verticals.

Sweet Security

Nikon D300s
Nikkor 18-200 @ 120mm
F5.3 1/30s
ISO 1000 (ISO Auto)

This is one of the many security guards. It's a worrying trait: a shop that sells multi-coloured sugary happiness needs high-profile security to ensure that nobody takes any photographs of the merchandise. I don't really understand it either, but here we are, with a uniform standing in front of columns of uniform sweets.

Photographically, this was tricky. It was shot from some distance away, and the guard is lit from behind. There's no opportunity to use flash at that sort of distance, and getting the guard correctly exposed blows out the background colours. So I got the best compromise I could and then selectively boosted the guard's brightness in Photoshop post-processing.

As with the other shot from the confectionery store, I set the camera on ISO-Auto with 1/30s as the minimum shutter speed, and used aperture priority. It's a useful trick where tripods are forbidden and there's not much light. The camera jacks up the film speed until 1/30s is possible.

Shabab

Nikon D300s
Nikkor 18-200 @ 29mm
F/4 1/50s
ISO 200

Two groups of young gentlemen, all wearing the same attire. It was going to be these or else a group of hoodies, but the latter is Not Coming In Dubai^TM this time of year. Luckily, not a baseball cap in sight. Shabab, incidentally, is Arabic for Boyz or possibly Yoofs.

As with other shots taken in the mall, I had to be quick off the mark, so composition was adjusted afterwards in post-processing.

Frangipani

Nikon D300s
Sigma 50mm macro
F/3.2 1/250s
ISO 200

Do you like the uniform flowers? They do smell nice too. This was just an excuse to get out the Nifty Fifty and play with the macro. I shot this one late afternoon in the hope of getting some reasonable shadows, and cropped it close in the camera.

Public Photography - AKA The Tripod Police

Hi,

Following Paul's and my recent comments on Tripod police I thought I'd dig out the article I read on American public photography.

Here is the original blog article I read on New York Rules.
http://theartlawblog.blogspot.com/2007/10/revised-public-photography-rules.html

The Full rules are here :-
http://www.nyc.gov/html/film/downloads/pdf/fprp.pdf

However the lazy amongst us paraphrased the rules say :-
(2) The following activities do not require that a permit be obtained pursuant to this chapter:
(i) Filming or photography occurring on City property involving the use of hand-held devices provided that such activity neither involves the obstruction of one or more lanes of a street or walkway of a bridge, nor results in less than eight feet or one half of the width of a sidewalk.

It then later defines hand held to also include tripods. However they do seem to get upset about light stands, dollies, tracks etc.

Also found various US transport rules on photography
http://www.thejoekorner.com/photrules.shtm


Cheers,
Richard B.