The winter league in the Dublin Camera Club concludes with the league finals where the highest scoring images which have been retained from the league are judged by an external judge to find the best images of the year. Last night saw the judging of the Digital Projected Images and Monochrome Prints categories. This year 4 of my images qualified. This shot was highly commended in the Digital Projected Images category.
The photo was captured during a visit to Munich in Germany at the start of November (sadly, missing the Oktoberfest). The city takes its holy days seriously, and our last day was All Saint’s Day, which meant that practically every shop in the city was shut. With time to kill before heading for the airport, and no shops to browse in, we did a little sight seeing on an open top bus, followed by a stroll around the centre. There were lots of cyclists, as happens in most European cities I guess, and we came across on area of the city centre which seemed to be a thoroughfare for them. A few weeks previously in Rome I captured a moving shot of a motorcyclist by panning the camera to match his speed and the end result looked quite good. I decided to repeat that success as the cyclists whizzed passed.
There’s nothing fancy going on here in terms of capture or post processing. I chose a shutter speed of 1/15 to add some blur to the background, I turned on the continuous auto focus (which is quite good on the Nikon D300 due to it’s 3D tracking capabilities) and I chose the appropriate aperture for the light to give a good exposure – in this case I think it was f/13. The light is all ambient, and to get this shot was just a matter of trial and error really, panning the camera as each cyclist passed, and firing off a burst while keeping an eye on the composition. There’s not much more you can do for this type of photo.
I like the fact that the cyclist is perhaps more formally dressed than you would expect, and the isolation of him against the blurred background helps the composition. The muted tones, and the line leading from the bottom left add to the shot also. Last night’s judge agreed.
In two weeks time the retained photos in the Colour Prints category are judged – lets hope I have some success with one of my 5 prints that qualified.
Recent Comments