I know that you’ve all seen this image before. How could you not? It sits on the top of my webpage now. However, I felt like this image needed a little bit more love because it is one of my absolute favourites. Even the image that I left fairly untouched turned out to have a lot of flavour. I love the life in the plaza people wandering about with their families, playing, and taking pictures. But what makes this photo is the man selling balloons from his three wheel bike. That just adds another dimension to the image. In the colour targeted image I used for my banner I really wanted to make sure that people wouldn’t miss him, and thus turned everything black and white to do so. Here is an HDR version of that same image without the colour:
The Shot: Photo Tips
I’ve mentioned a number of times how the most simple trick to taking impressive pictures is to change the angle. You don’t need a fancy camera for this, just look for different ways to see the image. This view, thanks to the many pigeons in the plaza, I have called pigeon eye view. This is not how we as humans see the plaza, but as pigeons see it. And that is what makes it more interesting. The second tip from this photo of Bogota is obvious: find an interesting subject and frame it. Many people might have raced up and photographed this subject directly, but by putting him in his environment it has given more life to the situation, and the image. Remember, great photography is about more than capturing an image, it is about capturing the feeling exuded in the environment we are capturing.