Shillong market

[achyut]

This photo was clicked in Shillong, a town in North-Eastern part of India.

I always fall in a dilemma with photographs where I want to show both people and surroundings. Here, in this picture, as I wanted to show the faces the best I had to sacrifice the background and details in surroundings. Some stuffs are blown out a little bit. Vegetables look burned out in this photograph. Does that bother viewers much? or should I care much as these stuffs are only supporting the subjects?



EXIF:

Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Lens: EF17-40mm f/4L USM
Exposure: 0.004 sec (1/250)
Aperture: f/5.0
Focal Length: 29 mm
ISO Speed :100
Exposure Bias: 0 EV

[bratboy76]

I love street photographs but i am very careful with this category as you are not sure what you will find out there. But some important things that i keep in mind when i go to the streets are:

1. Keep the settings ready before clicking the shot. I prefer doing a custom setting suitable for a sunny day and keep it saved as a template. Helps to avoid missing a good subject because your camera settings isn't ready yet.

2. Keep the lens that supports wider aperture like f 1.4 or f 1.8 etc handy - This ensures your images are sharper and more real.

3. Never frame too many subjects at the same time (unless you are a PRO and know what you need to do to highlight the best subject). I would prefer to sit down and keep my camera few feet away from that vegetable and focus on the people and blur out the foreground to creat the effect needed.

4. Have a lens that supports a decent mid range of focal point like a 18-200mm as it helps to shoot both wider shots and a closer portrait from a good distance.

5. Look around and the see the most unique thing in the place. Sometimes we get so absorbed in focusing on colorful props or specific subjects that we forget to look around for THE MOST UNIQUE things happening around in the street.

Hope that helps.

[shruggy63]

Ooh that's close to being really good IMHO. I also think that there may be one too many people in the shot, unless you can expand the frame to give a little more space around the kid? But I have to agree that you've not got as much colour in it as was possible. The corrugated iron wall at the back could've been beautiful on its own?
So in such harsh light (being constructive :-) use an ND filter, intentionally underexpose or bracket shots.
Good shooting man!

[achyut]

@bratboy76, shruggy63- Thank you so much for your input.

@bratboy76- Very good points you have raised- However, I have different opinions on couple of them-
I do not prefer a wide aperature on street when I want most of things in focus. I have taken a lot of pictures with wide aperture and can not say that I am very happy with what I did so far with wide aperature. Those are different compositions altogether, I think.

Second thing, I have never admired any lens with long zoom range such as 18-200 as they are not very sharp. I have always perfered primes when I do not need to change lens.

[achyut]

@shruggy63- agree with you on giving space near the kid. Actually, I did give some space when I clicked this photo. However, I cropped the pic towards right as there was a hand in the right side of frame that was quite distracting.