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Behind The Lens
Location
I took this photo in my hometown Ljubljana here in Slovenia. It shows one of the highest buildings in town situated in centre downtown.Time
This photo was taken about four, five years ago. I was taking pictures, mostly details of some art nouveau buildings in town, when I noticed the cleaners on this modernistic skyscraper on the other side of the street. It's not very common situation in my hometown to see such work, so I turned my camera immediatly. It was a nice summer day with lots of clouds on blue sky but no harsh sun.Lighting
I used only natural light, which was the only possible way, since this was street scene and the cleaners were pretty much distanced high on a building. The clouds were just perfect, not only because they're shaped to draw attention to the cleaners, but also because of the clouds the light in the middle of the day in late August was not so harsh as it could be.Equipment
I used Nikon D5100 camera and some zoom lens (probably Sigma 70- 300mm) which today I don't use any more. Nothing else.Inspiration
It's just the kind of "at the right time at right place" photo. I've done several shots from different angels and distances. But when I composed this picture I knew that this is the one.Editing
Picture was taken as coulour raw file. I still have the colour version, but I think the bw conversion suits better. This photo is mostly about the graphic, the interchange of lines, dark and bright parts and that's what makes the composition. Colours are, despite the beautiful blue of the sky, irrelevant. In conversion I did the usual correction of contrast and add some clarity.In my camera bag
Things changed from the time I took this picture. I photograph since I was a kid and I was quite serious about photography when I studied at Art academy (in times of analogue photography), but later turned into painting and take only usual familial pictures. Even sold all my SLR equipment at some time and for two decades shoot only with compact cameras. But about six years ago my old passion returned when I bought Fuji HS10 camera. Being able to manualy control the camera I soon jump to Nikon D5100. This came with 18- 105mm lens and I also bought Sigma 70-300mm lens. After two years of everyday training I "overgrow" and sell Sigma and bought some primes: Nikon's 35mm/1.8 and 50mm/1.8 lens and Tamron 90mm/2.8. For tele now I use 70-200mm/2.8 lens and some other more specific lens. For landscape I use Sigma 10-20mm a lot, for street photography 35mm is my first choise, for taking potraits of people or animals Tamron 90mm/2.8 and 70-200mm are handy. If on travel where I know I'll shoot different stuff and will not have enough time Tamron 18-270mm do the job and I just accept the limits.Feedback
No matter what you're photographing composition is essential. You can repair some not perfectly exposed pics, but there is not much you can do about composition later (of course you can do some cropping, but you can not change the whole idea of the compsition). In this picture the idea was to make a dinamic composition out of mostly vertical and horizontal elements and also to exegerate the contrast between more amorfic shapes of clouds and pure geometry of the building. Diagonals of the clouds and those of building shoot from particular angle now makes composition dynamic and are also common elements of otherwise opposite structures. Do a lot of practice in composition, think about it before you press the shutter and learn about composition from photographers as well as from a long history of visual art.