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From Rotterdam Centraal to home

Since two months I commute to work by public transport. Yesterday I finally decided to bring my camera along, something I have should done much earlier. While travelling home I snapped some shots. At first wasn't very happy with the results, but some turned out to be quite reasonable. Let's take a look in chronological order.

Rotterdam Centraal - Man waiting for train.
I started after my arrival at Rotterdam Central station. Light was already dim, forcing me to shoot with high ISO. This man was waiting was his train to arrive. Somehow this photo gives the impression of a lone city. Let me assure you that the train station was crowded! 


Rotterdam Centraal - Girls waiting for train.
Yet ... another shot where the station seems abandoned. I assume these girls were waiting for their train as well. Composition is simple but effective. The stairs draw the attention to the girls.

Rotterdam Centraal - Departing train.

Here I tried to pan my camera with the movement of the train.  I'll have to try this another time and maybe even more up close. It gives the feeling of peeking into another room. Lot's of things are happening. Open the picture and look what the people are doing.

Wilhelminaplein, Rotterdam - Man waiting.

After the train I take the metro to Wilhelminaplein. I already spotted composition before without bering a camera. Lucky again. Almost no people around, only one guy on the perfect spot for this shot.

Wilhelminaplein - Old man crossing the street
Once outside I noticed it already got dark. As an experiment  I cranked up the ISO all the way to 3200 and opened aperture to F2.8 (the max for the lens I used). I knew shutter speed was too slow for a decent photo, but therefor I tried to move my camera with my subjects. You can see the old man is much sharper compared to his soundings.

Rotterdam Zuid - Girl on bicycle.
Same experiment: high ISO, max aperture and pan with the subject. This shot was even taken with a shutter time of 1/8s. The results are not very spectacular, but it's a technique that I will be trying more often. It seems an effective - but challenging - way to isolate the subject.

For whomever reached the end of this article. I've added a page to my blog called 'Hall of fame' where I maintain an overview of my prize-winning photos ;)

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