Photo of the Week - Week 2

We finally were able to make it to the Panecillo, a prominent landmark here in Quito. I had tried to go there before with some friends who were visiting from out of town, but despite driving for way too long, we never made it. I decided that the Panecillo was a kind of mythical place that one could never reach. This time, however, some local friends guided us. I have to admit, however, that in all the long time I drove around unsuccessfully, I never once saw the roads we went on ... it was a whole neighborhood painted a kind of orangish-red.

Anyway, I had been trying to imagine the kind of images I wanted to make, should I ever actually get to the Panecillo. It's a large statue situated on a hill and overlooks the Old Town. If you've seen photos from Quito, there is probably a photo of this statue in there somewhere. I wanted to get photos of this icon that were not the standard, iconic photos. Having never been there, plus having five small kids in tow, meant this would have to be more of a recon photo shoot, though I did get some images I liked.

My thought was to really change the perspective of my shots - try and look at the statue from a different point of view than the standard. The idea I had was to lay on the ground and look up at the statue, as well as pulling in tighter for more detail shots. Here's one of the resulting images:



Shutter Speed: 1/60s
Aperture: F13
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 70mm
Lens: Canon 70-200mm L
Camera mounted on a tripod

In many of the other shots, I was able to get some good clouds in the background, which really add to the shots. In this one, however, no clouds, just plain blue sky. I wanted something to modify this and give something of a back lit appearance to the statue. I added a lomo effect, which gives a slight vignette to the edges of the frame. This time around, it worked well to achieve the look I wanted for this particular image.

The only other post-processing I did was to use the clone tool to get rid of the lightning rod sticking out of her head; just too distracting.