I believe I can fly!

Almost every evening I’m out taking my daughter to nearby parks to quench her new found thirst for slides and swing. This time the entire family went to Catamaran Park in Foster City. My daughter spends nearly an hour (and sometimes even more) playing with all the things that are there for kids to play. I take my camera along with me so that I can practice some silhouettes while she is busy playing. Since the sun is almost down and nothing of interest around, I resort to practicing silhouettes.

There is a basketball court and I often do see some people playing there. Never did it cross my mind to take a shot at them. Since there was nothing else, I thought maybe I can try some at the players. Though there were some players (with long track pants), I was waiting for somebody to turn up in proper attire (with basketball shorts). After some time, Matt came along and gave permission to take his shots while he practiced his at the basket.

Matt is a nice guy who has just moved into the city. Here is some background info on him in his own words….

“My name is Matt I recently turned 25 and I grew up in Sacramento and recently moved to the bay area for work. I enjoy playing basketball and I also play football. I come from a close family who is very important to me. I play sports to stay in shape and because I am very competitive at every thing I do. I hate to lose.”

This is the first time where a shot of mine has come out exactly how I pictured it at the time of taking it. Right from the elements in the composition to post-processing, everything worked like a charm…except for the green fence. The fence is the result of the adjoining soccer field getting renovated and I couldn’t avoid it. I might have tried a more close-up shot from the ground angle, but that would mean asking Matt to jump higher in the air. Also there wouldn’t be any reference as to how high he was in the air without the ground element in the picture. Other than that, I would have to ask Matt to jump even higher…which didn’t feel right as I would be disturbing his practice session. It was great that he allowed me to take some shots, but asking him to jump higher would be too much. So I let it be there in the picture. Probably could have darken’d it a bit more, but for some reason didn’t. Overall I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out.