Peekaboo

by Ibrahim Rasheed
(Malaysia, Mantin)

Shy acknowledgement

It was my first time shooting to get details and just to get a good photograph.

I normally shoot to just capture a moment. This was done with my phone cam 2.0 mp Sony Ericsson early morning.


Phone cams have one big plus point – because you are likely to carry it with you wherever you go, you also have a camera with you wherever you go too!

They do have drawbacks though, which is why, currently, they are not a substitute for an actual camera.

Some of the drawbacks are being addressed by manufacturers – they are slow to capture images, but getting faster. They are poor in low light, but the addition of flashes is improving this.

There is one drawback that will be very difficult to improve upon – depth of field.

This is the amount of a photo that is in focus, from front to back of the image.

If the subject is in clear focus, but the background is blurred then you have shallow depth of field. If almost everything is in focus then you have a deeper depth of field.

With Ibrahim's photo it would have been a better shot if the millipede was in crisp focus, and the background blurred. It would concentrate the photo on the subject.

However, there is nothing Ibrahim could have done about this with a phone camera – they just aren't capable of creating a shallow depth of field.

The only other area for improvement in this photo would be to improve the contrast a bit. This would also help to saturate the colours. It is easy to do, and any image editing software will work for this.

If you're interested in finding out a lot more about image processing give this downloadable course a try. There's a free demo available so it won't cost anything to look.

Well done Ibrahim for spotting the photo opportunity, and I hope there are a few tips here too!

Ed.