Yellow umbrellas!

[Gulpa]

One of the mobile companies were promoting the new iPhone 3GS the other day and I was fortunate enough to pass by when they were giving people yellow umbrellas and made them dance a little "Singing in the rain" choreography.


I took quite a few photos, but the following I like best:



The rest of the photos: Photo2, Photo3, Photo4

EXIF:
Exposure: 0
Aperture: 3.5 F
Shutter Speed: 1/80 sec
Focal Length: 33.2 mm


I use a Canon PowerShot S3 IS and have been shooting for only a few months now as a hobby so I would like your advice on what could I have improved as far as:

1) Composition
2) post processing
3) how would you reduce the exposure in the top half of the 3rd picture? Half of the people were standing in the shade and the other half in the sun. It would have been hard for me to take 2 pictures with different exposures and blend them.

[Unipsychle]

too much softening in the PP.

[Gulpa]

Thanks, Unipsychle... Can you elaborate, please?

Would you advise not to add the gausian blur at all, or would you blur it less than I did?

There's a lot happening in the first two photos... how would you accentuate the subject without softening the clutter around it?

[Murtasma]

I think the image is just a little too busy. I would have used a larger aperture if possible or try recomposing the image so the people in the background are further away. I don't mind the blur too much I think it adds a nice ethereal feel to the image but the subject is competing to much with the people in the background. If they all had umbrellas that where displayed in the same fashion I think it would work well.

[Gulpa]

Thanks for the advice, Murtasma.

I'll have to think about a way to achieve that with PP.