Thai new year celebration

Jim Kuo

Jim Kuo

The man in the hat
13rd to 15th of April is Thai new year and there were celebration events going on in Thai temple at Wimbledon. So I went to take some shots.

Beautiful girl in traditional costume (excluding the purple jacket)
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Receiving blessing from a monk
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A dude sticking gold leaves on a buddha statue for good luck
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Miss Songkran (Thai new year) contestants
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Merciless monk, shooting with a 5D Mark II + red ring lens
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It was a good day, thanks for looking :).

Jim
 
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Thanks Pete for the suggestion, I have added a very slight hint of vignette to #1. :)
 
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Man, that monk is packing some L lens heat! ;)

Now I've read the thread, and picked up the vignette addition to #1, I can see now why it was more engaging - good suggestion from Pete.

The only other thing I'd offer would be a way to reduce the amount of visual information in very busy scenes - You could experiment with using narrower DOF with the aperture almost wide open, and blur-out some of the background figures.
 
Thanks Chris. That's a good tip.

I had my camera set up in street mode (small aperture, pre-focused to hyperfocal distance...etc), and I wasn't fast enough to change settings when the shot came up... How I wish x100 had same C1-3 mode like 5D2 :).
 
Thanks Pete for the suggestion and the demonstration! The change is getting very subtle now I am having a hard time seeing the difference, but I do understand what your technique is achieving here. Also, thanks for bringing up use of layers, as I start to see using PS could result in a more desirable effect for this particular photo than LR.

I would usually turn this type of photos into B/W, I could decrease the blue/purple channels and bring up the yellow/orange/red as a way to bring attention to the main subject. However, her colourful dress is one of the main interests of this photo, so I didn't go for that.
 
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I often dive into PS from LR to get a bit more control. I guess you could desaturate either globally or with the colour sliders and then re-saturate the girl with a local adjustment in LR. I find layers easier and you can go back to them if you don't flatten the image (by opening the file directly in PS) and then any additional changes you make will be reflected in the version in LR.
 
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I find a little blurring of the background can also lift a subject.
Though whichever technique you use, be careful not to get too sharp an edge around the main subject as it can make it look very artificial.

I'd also crop this picture to simplify the background, personally.

Lovely subject, though...
 
Thanks Adrian :)

It was a shame that I was in a hurry to take the shot, as I caught the girl on her break and she wasn't specifically posing for me ;).
 
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