Photographic Reasoning in a Bookstore

^I was so tempted by his typical gesture of reading to tell of the same theme and the more dramatic light/ shade disturbution I could find in the bookstore that I balantly pointed the GX200 exactly this close to him and prepared to shot. He gave me a glimpse but didn't budge, so I released the shutter. The shot was pre-exposed and done in teh black-and-white TE mode.

Only for a month or two since I bought the GX200 did I, being too occupied, not joined the monthly photo contest kindly arranged by Pavel of ricohforum.com, now the de facto official global customer centre for Ricoh cameras. The participation is not simply for winning's sake but more for showing support and sharpening my photographic skills.

This is why I have actually contested some other photo competitions, sometimes successfully, sometimes not so. The greatest reward is not in the prizes but the recognition. I expect to see my other photographic works to be exhibited alongside other finalists' who also almost made it.

For this month's ricohforum contest themed on Readers Reading, I traveled to the best place for doing the shots, which is naturally the book stores. And it was a big one in Shenzhen, the modern Chinese city neighbouring Hong Kong.

The section which epitomizes the spirit of reading in any book store is naturally the children section, where I headed direct to and found kids occupying the floor reading in every conceiable way. They were so engrossed in their reading that I was free to shoot. But, there the indoor light was anything but dramatic. The setting was also not nice for doing a shot with an obvious primary subject which I had hoped: eyes were all casted downwards and faces were generally not showing.

"How do I express the idea of readers reading?" I muttered to myself.

Having taking some test shots around the section and on the brink of quitting, I'd got an idea just in time to save the day: all I had to do was to show how the readers were engrossing in reading! The bookselves drew plenty of diagonal, vertical and horitzontal lines for the compostion. So did the children's characteristic gestures. And if I couldn't take a shot with the primary subject looking into the lens, I could photograph the subject from behind. I could even use the proportion of each subject in the image to tell the importance of the subjects too.

So I kept wandering in the book store at the children section and looking for the right shot ....

But did I succeed?