Today is the third day of the Chinese New Year. I dropped into the Thean Hou temple during the afternoon, which is just down the road from where I live. I went to the temple intending to grab a few pictures of the Chinese lanterns on display. I got my lantern shots, but I wasn’t very happy with them because the sky was quite overcast, so I couldn’t get the contrast between the lanterns and the sky that I was looking for.
So I hung around the temple for a while hoping to find some more interesting subjects, and my patience was rewarded when a couple of the female performers from a Chinese Opera group that was performing in a small theatre under the temple, came outside to help the ticket sellers attract customers.
One of them was very pretty, and kept smiling at me. I shot off a few frames of her, and there was one shot that I liked very much, but when I blew it up on my computer screen at home, I discovered there was a face right over her left shoulder (somebody who had walked behind) that completely spoiled the shot. So I had to heavily crop the shot down to this composition which is only 8 per cent of the original image area.
The image is a little soft because of the heavy cropping and the fact it was handheld at 1/60 at a focal length of 90mm, but I think the softness suits her beautiful porcelain-like skin. She looked almost like a doll.
So I hung around the temple for a while hoping to find some more interesting subjects, and my patience was rewarded when a couple of the female performers from a Chinese Opera group that was performing in a small theatre under the temple, came outside to help the ticket sellers attract customers.
One of them was very pretty, and kept smiling at me. I shot off a few frames of her, and there was one shot that I liked very much, but when I blew it up on my computer screen at home, I discovered there was a face right over her left shoulder (somebody who had walked behind) that completely spoiled the shot. So I had to heavily crop the shot down to this composition which is only 8 per cent of the original image area.
The image is a little soft because of the heavy cropping and the fact it was handheld at 1/60 at a focal length of 90mm, but I think the softness suits her beautiful porcelain-like skin. She looked almost like a doll.