John and Marie were squatting on the ledge of a display window on the eastern side of George Street as I made my way down to Martin Place about 8:30 in them morning. They looked a little out of their millieu: not lined along the barriers like others with their foldup chairs from Bunnings and their thermos of steaming coffee. Marie patted her hair and adjusted her shoulders. John just smiled but said nothing. They had been married 35 years and came in on the train from Epping. I wonder how long they stayed.
There is a massive temptation to drop this portrait down in the list: replace these fine folk with "characters". They are ordinary, beige even. Like you and I. Private people leading quiet lives. They are John Howard's white picket fence people: middle-class, white, anglo-saxon anglicans. They have a place in our society and I want to reflect that. They were in the city, saturday morning, 8:30am. I acknowledge their part in our multi-faceted society.
5 comments:
Cant quite work out what I have focussed on here. I think it is easy to focus on a body rather than a face. I might return to evaluative metreing for the AF.
Looks like you've tried to focus on her face and almost got it. Its not bad in the post but a little out when you blow it up. I like the angle you have them at.
Yes, agreed. The blowing up process is the telling moment. Like Tim with the white beard ... blow him up and he is still crystal clear. That is my aim.
I like this angle ... however usually means that the second person is out of focus ... although there must be a way of achieving focus right through the image ... Av or Tv or Zzz ... or summat ...
The opposite to what you have been doing with portraits. Deep depth of field. The higher the aperture number the more of the shot will be in focus. The auto landscape setting will do it or try something like F22 or a bit less.
I always have trouble in this sort of circumstance, so I just crank up the Aperture, and forget to take any notice of the speed, which is often quite slow and mostly leaves the shot blurry from camera shake!
They look too old to have been only married 35 years, heck we've been married 35 years and I'm sure we're not that old.
Are we?
Perhaps it's the tie.
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