The Thin Blue Line Photo

Photographer’s Note

I have a feeling Luko will really hate this one. Not only is this one person doing nothing, it is many people doing nothing. At least they are not looking directly into the camera ;)

A couple days ago, I uploaded this shot of one of the military personal who were forbidding entry to where the speeches, etc were taking place for the 10/10 ceremonies here in Taipei. These are not military,but as you can see the police were out in full force. These guys seemed to be awaiting deployment to somewhere.

ISO 200, focal length 30mm, handheld, normal post processing, but with a slight crop on the right and on the bottom.

supereira, markogts has marked this note useful

Critiques | Translate

geist_21 (652) 2004-10-12 9:58

Although full of people "doing nothing" as you say in your note, it's an interesting photo, of journalist kind. And although doing nothing we can see their expressions, so concentrated, except the 6th of the front line, making a good contrast. I like the composition, with a good point of view

virginia (495) 2004-10-12 10:04

very nice,good composition and contrast,like it

scalerman (25733) 2004-10-12 16:39

great one Darren. I noticed you boosted the yellows in selective color adjusment :) well seen.

manny (21378) 2004-10-13 3:24

It is so-so Darren...nothing much of interest here: I just can't seem to focus. Far below your good shots.

[2]

Luko (13894) 2004-10-13 11:30

Yeah, I think Manny spotted the main flaw here : there's nowhere to focus on. There's nothing but dumb daily reality around , I'm always perplex about shots where background office curtains are as sharp as the foreground characters...

It reminds me the office shots I had to take to illustrate our company's website (I mean the office curtains in the background... not the policemen!).

That's not an image about people doing nothing, it's just a shot illustrating nothing where people are included in. Another genre I don't like either... ;-D

[3]

MKING (3050) 2004-10-15 14:13

Right next to me on my desk is a newspaper clipping for the touring Red Army choir pictured in a pose very similar to this one. What makes it 'work' is that the PJ has chosen to employ his telephoto rather than a wide angle to achieve the other sort of line cliche-- a single face picked out with the rest blurred. No doubt, it's still a picture of many people doing nothing but with one face arbitrarily concentrated upon compared to the rest...

If I were in the same position, I'd have shot what I mentioned above then switch back to the WA and click my fingers incessantly until ONE of them looked at me before tripping the shutter-- just something to break the monotony.

I wonder if they know how to play dominoes? ;)