Robert Watcher
Well-known member
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On the Streets of Guatemala
- Thread starter Robert Watcher
- Start date
Robert Watcher
Well-known member
Robert Watcher
Well-known member
Asher Kelman
OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
You are now painting in the pulsation of life! This is fast and lively. I appreciate this very much. Amazing how much live life is conveyed here in still images!
Asher
Asher
Robert Watcher
Well-known member
Thank you Asher.
Robert Watcher
Well-known member
My brother came up with a good title for the 'GENESIS' image when I posted it on my Instagram account...
... 'In the beginning there were tube TV's'
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... 'In the beginning there were tube TV's'
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Robert Watcher
Well-known member
I find it interesting sometimes when I look at the sequence of images that I shoot. Many times I am unaware of how I see and anticipate - especially when it comes to people and action - the process just happens naturally I guess.
Until I looked at the strip of images in Lightroom, leading up to the final image that I have posted above - - - I wasn't aware of how long I had been tracking the Mayan women and probably watching them out of the corner of my eye, before they ended up in the perfect location.
When I saw the women in the far background as I was sitting on a step at the park, shooting kids feeding and playing with the pigeons - I could not have known where they were heading or that they would walk through the second scene across the street from me, where I was turning to photograph people walking along the wall with interesting architecture and then back to the kids playing.
So in the first shot of the contact sheet, the women are quite a ways away coming in my direction, then in the distance they head down the stairs. For these 2 shots I had turned away from including the children with the pigeons, I guess to see what would develop.
I turn my camera 90 degrees back to the left to take some more shots of people walking along the wall. Noticing out the side of my eye - the women are a little closer to me and in a clearing crossing the street. So I zoomed in to the full 84mm equivalent reach of my zoom lens to grab that shot.
Then as I go back to take shots of different people walking along the wall, the women happen to walk into the scene. This content of them all in a perfect line one behind the other, was far more appealing to me that the other people I had been including in the frames - and so I took several shots with them in different places so that i could decide in post processing, which positioning I liked best.
I glanced at the series of shots on my cameras LCD screen and saw the woman and boy on the right side of the last image, and decided to grab a frame of the wall with nobody along it - just in case I wanted to mask out someone or something. And that is exactly what I decided to do by opening the last 2 frames as layers in Photoshop and aligning them and masked out the people on the right side for the final image (I don't use a tripod but even so the 2 frames were positioned not too differently and fortunately I hadn't changed my zoom focal length - which I was worried about when I pointed my camera back at the blank wall)
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Until I looked at the strip of images in Lightroom, leading up to the final image that I have posted above - - - I wasn't aware of how long I had been tracking the Mayan women and probably watching them out of the corner of my eye, before they ended up in the perfect location.
When I saw the women in the far background as I was sitting on a step at the park, shooting kids feeding and playing with the pigeons - I could not have known where they were heading or that they would walk through the second scene across the street from me, where I was turning to photograph people walking along the wall with interesting architecture and then back to the kids playing.
So in the first shot of the contact sheet, the women are quite a ways away coming in my direction, then in the distance they head down the stairs. For these 2 shots I had turned away from including the children with the pigeons, I guess to see what would develop.
I turn my camera 90 degrees back to the left to take some more shots of people walking along the wall. Noticing out the side of my eye - the women are a little closer to me and in a clearing crossing the street. So I zoomed in to the full 84mm equivalent reach of my zoom lens to grab that shot.
Then as I go back to take shots of different people walking along the wall, the women happen to walk into the scene. This content of them all in a perfect line one behind the other, was far more appealing to me that the other people I had been including in the frames - and so I took several shots with them in different places so that i could decide in post processing, which positioning I liked best.
I glanced at the series of shots on my cameras LCD screen and saw the woman and boy on the right side of the last image, and decided to grab a frame of the wall with nobody along it - just in case I wanted to mask out someone or something. And that is exactly what I decided to do by opening the last 2 frames as layers in Photoshop and aligning them and masked out the people on the right side for the final image (I don't use a tripod but even so the 2 frames were positioned not too differently and fortunately I hadn't changed my zoom focal length - which I was worried about when I pointed my camera back at the blank wall)
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Andy brown
Well-known member
Robert, I think you've described how it is that you are in tune with your environment.
A bit like a sportsman who knows where the ball will be, not where it is.
I witnessed a similar phenomenon recently, I was on safari in South Africa (absolutely brilliant experience BTW, I would recommend it to anyone), the guides had an absolutely freakish ability to locate and spot wildlife. They live the experience, they completely love it and they were completely in tune.
A bit like a sportsman who knows where the ball will be, not where it is.
I witnessed a similar phenomenon recently, I was on safari in South Africa (absolutely brilliant experience BTW, I would recommend it to anyone), the guides had an absolutely freakish ability to locate and spot wildlife. They live the experience, they completely love it and they were completely in tune.
Robert Watcher
Well-known member
Thank you Andy.
I do believe that you are right. I as well traveled to Costa Rica several years ago with friends who were very serious bird watchers (not photographers). We would be walking through jungles where nothing was visible to me and he would constantly be pointing up into spaces high in the trees or thatches on the edges of paths - and sure enough there would be some unique bird or animal faintly visible. And he didn't even know the area - just a natural ability to recognize and identify just through a sense of what was going on with movements and sounds I guess, that I sure didn't have.
That is a great line and how I really feel with my life in Central America over the past 8 years.
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I do believe that you are right. I as well traveled to Costa Rica several years ago with friends who were very serious bird watchers (not photographers). We would be walking through jungles where nothing was visible to me and he would constantly be pointing up into spaces high in the trees or thatches on the edges of paths - and sure enough there would be some unique bird or animal faintly visible. And he didn't even know the area - just a natural ability to recognize and identify just through a sense of what was going on with movements and sounds I guess, that I sure didn't have.
That is a great line and how I really feel with my life in Central America over the past 8 years.
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