Thaipusam 2007: Mother and child
This, surely, is an uncommon mother and child picture, taken at Thaipusam 2007.
It's a happy – and, I might add, proud – addition to my photograph of hands series.
The scene happened so quickly that all I could manage was one quick shot. And I am thankful it is reasonably sharp and in focus, without significant camera shake even though I took this hand-held, with a 75-300 zoom lens, probably set all the way at 300.
It helped that I had reasonably fast film, Kodak Supra 400. I have gone back to using negatives lately, partly because I am feeling the high cost of buying, processing and scanning slides.
But it seems to me that scans from negatives generally turn out better.
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And with professional negative films like the Kodak Supra and the Fuji Pro 400H, I get fine grain and rich, saturated colors. I am hoping to try the Kodak Supra 800 but so far, stocks have been sold out. Even if it's more grainy, I figure it is better than having camera shake when I use a long lens.
The composition of this mother and child image was not perfect and had to be cropped somewhat. It might have been better if I had the full right hand of the mother at the top. But at least I got her bangles all in and the final result is still quite good.
If I told you I purposely composed / cropped it this way with a bit of the hand cut off, perhaps you might believe me, ha ha! But I am being honest here. Life is not perfect. Photography certainly isn't and I have to be thankful that, sometimes, even imperfect photographs turn out quite good.
Click here to view the face of the lady in this mother and child photograph. She has a really lovely smile.
I had also experimented with a vertical crop of this same photograph of hands. But so far, my friends and I prefer the horizontal version above, with more of the mother's arm as well as her saffron dress. See what you think of this:
