Category Archives: Foreign

Photo of the Week – Karen Gross

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The interesting image below was shot by Karen Gross while on a trip to Mexico in September of 2010. It’s an early morning sunrise view from the balcony of a condo overlooking the old silver mining town of Taxco de Alarcón (de Alarcón is in honor of writer Juan Ruiz de Alarcon who was a native of the town), about a 2.5 hour drive to the south of Mexico City, in the state of Guerrero. This eastern sunrise view shows the
architecturally baroque styled Parroquia de Santa Prisa on the right, known also as the Church of the Rose-colored Stone, with the Cerro de Huixteco Mts in the background, tile rooftops and alley walkways below.

Unfortunately for Karen, a camera is not capable of capturing a scene with as much dynamic range as presented itself that morning. There’s such a great difference in the brightness of the sky and the darkness of the shadowed village that either the former is going to be overexposed with a loss of detail or the latter will consist of blocked shadow areas. The fact that her Kodak C182 camera has a very small sensor and produces only the compressed jpeg format only added to the problem. Karen edited the shot extensively in a attempt to recover the loss detail in the shadows, which did improve it somewhat, but the luminous and color noise became very evident. If you want to see a good example of just exactly what this noise looks like, click here for a cropped version of the photo. The only real solution is to go back to Taxco de Alarcón and bracket the shot, capturing various levels of exposure. This is a perfect scene to practice your High Dynamic Range Photography skills.

Karen Gross - Taxco de Alarcon, Mexico

Photo of the Week – Rosie Kosinski

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Rosie Kosinski is perhaps our youngest member, a student at Davidson College. But like so many other members, she is not an Ashe County native and has traveled the world extensively. The photo below is our first submitted from Israel, more specifically the Palestinian section in the city of Jerusalem.

Rosie Kosinski - Street Vendor in Old Jerusalem

Rosie Kosinski - Street Vendor in Old Jerusalem

It’s easy to see what first attracted her eye-the street vendor with his table of precariously stacked sesame rolls. The first instinct must have been to hone in on this central subject, taking up the entire frame. But creativity seldom follows the obvious route. Instead she increased the field of view to include the passageway to the left and to add the Palestinian students with their backpacks. It’s this decision that made an interesting scene much more so, elevating the final result into a shot that grabs one’s attention.

This photo is also one that could be analyzed from many different angles-the row of darker stones leading to the vendor, the diagonal lighter stones pointing to the passageway, the textured wall behind the vendor, the posters dividing the picture into thirds, the glance back by one of the students or the averted eyes of the vendor. However it’s all of these working together that tell the story and make the image a pleasure to view.