On 9.30.2006, I attended the annual festival held by the community of Treasure Island. Here is a link to the event. San Francisco mayor, Gavin Newsom, stopped by and shown his support to what he calls the “million dollar view for non-million dollar people”.
Here is a snapshot of Gavin Newsom preaching the importance of wearing helmets to local kids:
My daughter wanted a face painting. So, we stopped at the booth and I took a series of 40 shots. One of them caught my attention: the precision of the hands of the artist, the eyes looking at the camera, the sharpness of the details in the eye brows, and the story.
Nikon D50 • Nikkor 18-70 • 62 mm • 1/400s • f/4.5 • EV +0.33
9.30.2006 12:39PM
To focus more on the action and remove the distracting foreground, I cropped the image as follow:
I entered this image to the PACC competition in the Pictorial category on 1.10.2006. It did pretty well and the judge gave it a second place.
I re-entered it to the following MPPA competition also in the pictorial category and the judge gave it an Honorable Mention. It was suggested that the image had two subjects, competing each other: the hand of the artist and the eyes of the girl.
I Made a few edits based on that feedback, darkened the area outside the face and brightened-up the face. But I decided that the hand of the artist was an integral part of both the story and the composition.
Here is the final edit: