Having a break Photo

Photographer’s Note

This photo is taken near the end of La Rambla near Casa de la Ciutat. La Rambla is "the only street in the world which I wish would never end" spanish poet Federico García Lorca presumably once said. Well, it is a busy street with small shops, with dancers, actors, mimes, pickpockets and other entertainers :)
There are many-many "living statues" and they are so different I must applaude to their imagination and creativity. After walking down La Rambla all the way from Plaça de Catalunya, I was having a glass of beer at a street restaurant. About 20 meters away was this "living statue" having a break - cleaning his nails and smoking. When the break was over, he put on glasses, took a book, sat still and pretended he was reading a book :) I found it funny - someone's work is to pretend reading a book.

I took this photo with my 80-320mm lens @220mm. With shutter speed around 1/90 (ISO200) this was the most stable shot I got, others were blurry.

Postprocessing in PS: crop, autolevels, autocolor, autocontrast, resize, unsharp mask, frame.

wautersw, coco has marked this note useful

Critiques | Translate

wautersw (3603) 2007-01-28 15:26

Hi Lennart,

Very nice shot. Good Dof and nice colours. Good work.

TFS

Wolf

jdwyer264 (1082) 2007-01-28 16:28

A great capture, I first didn't know whether it was a statue working or on a break. A great image, I can just see him walking home 'hi honey, so how was your day?' 'Ok, you know. but I can't get my nails clean!' haha.
Great work, see what you think of my street entertainers shots.
TFS

coco (27848) 2007-01-29 9:15

Hi Lennart.

Nice this photo with a good composition and depth. The moment is also wonderful and I love it.

Regards from Barcelona.

ben4321 (9793) 2007-01-30 7:35

I like this one Lennart. The depth of field is well controlled, but what I like especially is how the colour of the cigaretts stands out from the greyness of his costume and makeup.
This would have been even better with some eye contact. Not necessarily direct eye contact looking into camera though; I just want to see the whites of his eyes.
Good work.

Cheers,
Ben