Shooting for Shadow and backlighting

Last week in Singapore, as usual, I went with my usual friend to shoot rock and wood. Nothing special, a lazy saturday afternoon. After a cup of coffee and some bargain shopping, we walked along the Singapore "River". (In fact, this is not a river because the water is salty, which failed the first test of a river. Any body ever come across a salty river please let me know.

A standard shot of Singapore River: bridge, high rise office buildings, cruise boat, and tourists. Suitable for Singapore Tourism Board's poster. I exposed for the buildings and the sky and use software to open up the shadow to avoid over exposure. Nothing fancy, nothing surprising. I feel I should go free-lance to make a few dollars for my camera bodies.

When I turn my camera to follow the cruise, the sun was directly into the len, building an interesting composition with the tree in centre, the composite works in this here. Please don't try yourself.

I started to notice the shadow of the rail, and kept searching for a good shadow shot.

From almost the same spot, just turn a bit to the right, the shadow of the tree, the rail was there. I could not trim the picture any further because I need to keep the leaves of the tree even though it was only a hint of the leaves.

Nice shadows, but not to forget to maintain some details in the shadow to give a overall low key feel. Remember I posted many blogs ago that when the sky is plain blue, plain grey or plain white, using some branches, trees to cover the sky a bit to avoid starring at a blank piece of uniform grey, blue or white. This is one of my favorite picture of the day. The tone of the picture is great. Take a look at the shadow, which has a lot of details, then look at the highlight, the details are also there. This is what we generally call a picture with good tonality even though in this case, the tone is considered low-key.

On the full size file, I can see even more detail, I am really considering selling the L brand 21mm and keep this much cheaper and as good Z brand. Right, this is not about camera, ok!

Another shot which is almost the same shot, but with a very low angle, now the shadow is even more prominent due to the setting sun. The subject is now pronounced "the shadow." This is another favorite picture which represents the title subject as best as I could. Remember to keep both highlight and shadow within the limit of the camera, either slightly too dark or too bright will ruin the picture.

Finally, a classic composition with the people subject on the left one-third, then the tunnel shadow on the right one-third, a balance picture, but no excitement at all.

I have not been posting so regularly because on the technical side, I have done with what I have to say; due to traveling, I was not able to take picture so frequently but I will continue with my effort. At least I will have a camera close to me at any time. My latest camera is a Samsung Galaxy SII.