The virtues of having your camera accessible when you're out and about!

Today I learnt a valuable lesson in regards to capturing a moment you're not expecting. I knew this was mostly applied with street photography but today I found it comes in useful when you are looking for a certain photograph but you end up with a completely different but equally effective one compared to the one you intended to take.

   More specifically I was looking to make figures anonymous by the means of photographing people from above, which I thought was a different treatment to this kind of photograph. I eventually got the overhead photograph as well but only after finding a scenario where people were made anonymous by facing away from the camera. This unexpected scenario occurred at a busy train station that I happened to be getting off the train at. All the people had to take the same exit from the station. I thought this would be a typical situation of people facing away from the camera and so anonymous. The people photographed were also in multitude, which added to the effect of anonymity as none of them stood out as individual.

1. People exiting a train station

2. Inside the station but from above

   My one regret about this session was that I wasn't shooting in the raw format at the time, which I felt was a shame as the scene was high contrast where post-processing of the raw file would have helped. However, I thought this was a good lesson for me and a good advocate of the raw format on digital cameras (that have that feature).

    My main objective for this session I managed to achieve as well, which was to photograph a busy place, although from the fairly unconventional angle of above. This was to make the people less prominent and to show them in the light of just a part of a place, rather than the place being just a 'backdrop' for the people. The reason I chose a busy place was so I could use one of the techniques suggested in the course - small and many, where the people were less prominent.