My Belly is Better than Yours, Sir!

I take lots of street shots each day.  This post aims to show how I do street shots with a very recent example: a photo I took just a few hours ago.

(This shot was made possible by the unassuming appearance of GX200 and its fantastic egronomics.  I had borrowed a LX3 for a week and found that for street shots it worked very differently with its shiny body and relatively awkward controls)

The theme for this month's photo contest is Police, Cops, Sherrifs.  I could have posted one of the old police photos as my entry.  But later I hoped to take a photo especially for the contest.  I planned to take a shot with a either quality of seriousness to it, or with a sense of humour. 

Either way, the image must show the police's face.  And this was the biggest challenge cos no one would hope to be interrogated.  I would have to take the shot by stealth.

Then early this evening I ran into this police hands-on-hip, obstentiously showing his big belly. Good grief, he is a policeman!  He needs to keep his body in good condition, does't he?  I immediately saw that he could make a funny photo.

So I walked slowly trailed him as he strolled along rather leisurely, checking out  the window displays.  I turned the GX200 to MY1 custom mode, which I set to fixed focus at one metre.  I slowly went past him and pointed the camera, tied to the neck strip around my neck, to his direction.  Before doing so, I, following me,  gathered the right position to hold the GX200.  With daily practices, I could hold the camera and blindly shot an image with the right alignment.  Take this photo for example, this is striaght out of the camera without cropping or rotation applied.

I went further ahead and noticed on the LCD that the photo was far from pleasing.  I hesitated a bit and finally, having turned around, walked back.  That was what I mean a photographer's mindset: take the shot now or it will never present itself again.  Every scene is unique in its own time slot with the specific combination of subjects and lighting conditions.

The secret of succeeding in making sharp street shots by stealth is that you should pre-expose and pre-focus the scene.  You should also make the shutter fast enough so that the shot will not be blurred while you pause for a tenth of a second to press the shutter.  Of course, you should have the composition in your mind, which take practices to do right.

So when I was pretty close to the police at about one metre, I pasued for less than a second and took the first photo of this post.  Actually, I saw the lady with the baby coming along behind the police before taking the shot.  I sort of expected the composition to be like what I ended up.

The scene has a humourous taste.  The police and the lady, kudos to the hands-on-hip gesture and the lady's scornful facial expression, made an interesting contrast.  They seemed to be competing for the bigger belly.

"My belly is bigger than yours, SIR!" scorned the lady.

"I agreed," said the baby boy.

"Right," I though to myself, wondering which one of them could run faster.