my favourite photos The Karthakali Performer # 3. (Best Viewed Large) The Mahabharata is the great national epic poem of India (officially known as "Bharat").

This image was shot handheld during a classical performance at

night in an open air concert. This epic Indian classic performance

started from 10.30pm and ended in the wee hours of 5.30am. I took

this shot while they were performing about 20 ft from the subject

which was brightly lit with concert lights. The colors from the gold

ornaments was simply awesome! Enjoy!

Get closer and pan right, great subject, but the vast empty area on the left leaves this image unbalanced!

Hassan, I actually cropped this image from a full body with the hat on the right complete. I felt it's too heavy with all the gold ornaments and that's why I prefer to have some space to balance this shot. You are of course entitled to your own opinion. It will be nice if others also share their views regarding this. Thanks for commenting.

I like the cropp.

The picture is well balanced, off center, and the black background makes the colours jump out. Great shot.

 

I downloaded the pict to sharpen it a bit and it worked out. Try usig the Polygonal Lazo Tool in Photoshop just around the face and sharpen the face using unsharp mask by 70% radious 1.5. Then go to edit-Fade Unsharp mask and apply 60% fade. I then applied unsharp mask to the whole picture at 50% x 1.5 radius and the result worked!!! on an other wise great picture as is!!!

 

Hope the tips help you in some way. I do not know how to post your pict for comparison but if you want to see it I'll be glad to mail it to you.

 

Regards

 

Leo Garcia / Venezuela

You did a great job with this series! They look as if they were shot in a studio...with very controlled lighting. Nice work. The framing adds to it.

I will love to see what you did. Please email me at alecee@photo.net. Sometimes it's quite difficult for me to judge the exposure as I work my images on my notebook. It depends on the angle of tilt for the TFT screen. It'll be better when I use the Sony 21" CRT monitor on my PC.

 

Sarah, Guillermo, thanks for sharing your views here. I appreciate it.

Alec, I agree with Sarah on this. They looked like they were shot in studio, with the dancers giving you their undivided attention.

Amar, if that was a fact then I will have to pay them a lot of money to be dressed with their full regalia. The wonders one can do with a good flash and digital camera. Thanks for the compliment.

I'm surprised the sony doesn't have high speed sync above 1/125. You should get an external flash, mine goes till 1/4000.

 

Very nice colours and Dof. Well done.

Vikram, for external flash I think I can get up to the max of 1/1000 if the flash is powerful enough to light up the subject. I just didn't try it. As it is I find my images are generally sharp enough most of the time during the shoot.

What a wild and wonderful world we live in, thanks Alec.