Malcom and the train - Somewhere in eastern Idaho; 5/25/11, 8:24:15 PM; f/5.6; 1/40; Nikon D5000
This picture was taken on the way home from Bannack, MT. Malcom decided he’d been in the car for long enough that day so we stopped to let him stretch his legs a bit. There were some train tracks right by the car so he grabbed his toy train and went for it. I had to lay on my side to get my camera right down by the tracks, then zoomed in and used the smallest aperture I could to blur the background. In post production I added a little saturation and contrast. I cropped a few pixels to fit it to a 4×6 picture.
I wish I could say I had a good reason for picking the contest I did, but it was mostly because I was just rushing to get one done. The photographics society was having a contest and the theme was endurance. I figured this was the most endurance based picture I had. I learned a lot about the differences between a photographer’s eye and the average person. I wasn’t really that impressed with this picture. I felt like the composition was a little weird, like Malcom was leaning a bit too much. The picture was oversaturated, and the bokeh really wasn’t that great. For an average student passing, they probably just saw a kid playing with a train on a train track and thought it was cute. I guess the moral of the story is that while a photographer’s eye is vital, I guess you have to keep in mind who you’re taking pictures for.
Contest date June 14th 2011
http://byuiphotographics.blogspot.com/p/contest-intructions.html
benmatheson 