LOAD Day 16 & Best Shot Wednesday (Nihao, Cupcake!)

Day 16 - HappyGraduation, originally uploaded by Xnomads.

A digital page today.

BEST SHOT WEDNESDAY

I'm doing this Wednesday a little different than before. Just one 'BEST' shot hasn't been doing it for me. So I thought I might try most interesting shot. Or perhaps a few most interesting shots from the week. I'll try that for a while and see how it works for me. Let me know what you think? I love comments.

I'm off to bed now, but I'll be back in a few hours to add a little commentary to each of the following photos. ENJOY! EDITED at 1:00PM, Beijing Time, Feb 17: Commentary has been added.

There are public exercise parks all over Beijing. The kids are always drawn in and have to give them a go. I like this photo for the pop of colors (contrasting) against the grey wall in the background. I also like the composition (Nicholas' face is in the top right third of the photo). I also like the straightness of the lines. I think this would be a far less effectivec photo if I had been standing off to the side even a little which would make the lines less uniform.

I am not sure this is a fantastic photo in and of itself but I like what is going on in it. This is a strange practice here in Beijing. Workers (in this case a trash bike driver) collect snow and then dump it down man holes all over the city. This was happening just as we were passing through this street. Nicholas was quite interested and stopped in his tracks to watch. You can see the worker there on the left side.

We took a break for some hot cocoa. This photo almost works for me. I wish Reece (far right) was turned into the photo and had a more engaging expression on his face. What I do like is the separation between all of the people (not crazy about the face growing out of Braden's head). I like the 'white space' in the photo between Nicholas and Dad. The triangle of cup lids (circles) is appealing.

I think this photo is hilarious. You see this all over Beijing. Couples getting their wedding photos taken at famous sights all over the city. In this case, I was trying to figure out what the heck they had in the background. All I could see was a mishmash of cluttered restaurants and neon signs. But based on the photographers angle, he must have the trees and he is probably using a zoom lens so it is blurred any way. I think this is a strange place to take wedding photos, but not the stranges place I've seen!

Nicholas was dying to play on the snow covered ice so he ran out on his own. I like how the silhouette of my two kids are separated from the other crowds of people. I also like how I got the sun to show up as well as a little color in the sky. The way I did that was to close down the aperture as far as it would go (i.e., f/22). I was attempting to get the star shape effect, but I think what happened was, it let in less light, so shutter speed was slower and more color ended up on the card/film. It also gave me those nice silhouettes as it ended up a little underexposed since the camera couldn't quite get a correct exposure (compensate) due to the extreme f stop I chose. (These are all theories of mine. Nothing is based in fact! And probably aren't explained all that clearly!)