Thaipusam 2007: Candid child portrait
What emotions are conveyed in this candid child portrait, with thumb in mouth, at Thaipusam 2007?
It seems to me she was fed up, perhaps with waiting for the adults to finish their prayer rituals. Maybe she was hot and bothered, for the sun was up and, at late morning, the temperature was getting hot. Maybe she was just tired.
If only I knew what was on her mind. Seems like a lot.
This is my favourite candid child portrait from the 10 or so candid portrait photographs I took at Thaipusam 2007. I was, in fact, all ready to go off when I decided to stay for another few minutes, and spotted a group of three or four children, all of whom made excellent candid portraits.
I like this image a lot, but my photo buddy Joe didn't.
Joe pointed out that the point of focus, the child's eyes, was not sharp. My immediate response (to myself, I did not mention it to him lest I appeared overly defensive) was that I actually focused on the hands and the mouth.
But Joe has a point there. Almost every portrait looks good if the eyes are in sharp focus. In this case, if I had focused on the eyes instead, the hand and mouth would still have been sufficiently sharp and the overall image would (or might) have been closer to perfection.
Joe's other criticism was that the image is too tightly cropped – to the extent that he is not 100 percent sure whether the hand actually belonged to the girl or to somebody else.
Here I have to disagree. Firstly, why should a little girl be placing someone else's thumb in her mouth? Secondly, if I taken a wider shot to show more of her arm, I think this child portrait would lose its impact and intimacy.
I think this image is good as it is. In fact, while I had taken two, three or more candid portraits of each of the other children, for some reason I only took one of this girl. I must have felt that the one was good enough.