1272. Travel Stories: "Pretty Girl"

Dec 20, 2013
Hotel Tatlises, Kusadasi, Turkey
Room 1321. A bigger spacious room with balcony. Heating is good as the floors don't feel cold to the bare foot.

Yesterday, visited Troy which was built around 5000 years ago. Helen of Troy was the face that launched a thousand ships but Troy was a most important city economically, attracting conquerors.
My packaged tour group (flying by SIA) consisted of 38 people while the other group from the same travel agency (flying by Emirates) had 32 people and more younger people including good-looking girls. Hence, an aunty asked her 17-year-old nephew to tackle the "liang ray" (pretty girls in Cantonese) of his age in the other group.     

Good looks are much valued as in the days of Helen of Troy.  So are good photographs. Hundreds of images are taken by me, but only one shown below can be considered attractive.

What makes a very good travel photo?
1. The light is most important. Bright sunshine on a cold winter's day can be appreciated in this image.
2. The composition. Framed by trees, branches and leaves.
3. The people. A "pretty girl" who is well groomed and dressed on a winter's day never fail to attract viewing by most people.

I hope this image will inspire one of the young men who spent most of their spare time viewing movies and gaming learn how to take excellent images during travel.and for work to market themselves.

The original large images, not photoshopped is below:

The original image was snapped from afar using Auto focus. I find this camera lens mentioned below, good for videography at autofocus mode unlike my other lens which "clicked and whirled" to autofocus on various people, producing much more blurred video images. This image is best taken without video as this is only a few seconds before the travellers move to another spot.


Photoshopped images are below:

 

Compact cameras and handphones cannot improve one's imaging skills
The camera information I used for the above images are:

Canon EOS 700D
Canon EFS 18-135mm Macro Lens 0.39m/1.3ft
with image stabiliser
"P" program mode
"AF" autofocus


Many photographers prefer "MF" Manual focus, but with this image, the pretty girl would just disappear by the time one manually focus. So, I don't use MF! The lighting may change in seconds too.


COMPOSITION
This image is framed by the tree (right), branches (left), leaves (above), reading plaque (below). It manage to capture the intense seeking of knowledge by the man with the green iPad while the pretty girl has matching handphone cover, grey gloves and coat and sunshine from the 10am sun shines in her hair.


It is very difficult to capture good travel photos and this is a rare one out of thousands.
As to the pretty girl in this image, she flies Emirates while I took the SIA and so we never got acquainted. I doubt the aunty's advice to the nephew was taken seriously by her nephew too.

Message to all young men obsessed with gaming till 3 am daily and looking sleepy at work.
CREATE, NOT CONSUME. My advice to the young men in their late 20s. Make time to study digital photography and you will appreciate life and the world much more with digital photography skills.