B&W conversion

[BrianA61]

My wife and I were on a 3 week trip to Vietnam last January. We were visiting a friend of hers and this old woman came up and sat down near me. I saw this image in b&w as soon as she sat down. I had my p&s camera with me but did not want to be so obvious that I was taking her photo. So, I got out my cell phone and was able to capture this. I'm not a people photographer, but, I found the Vietnamese people very photogenic. Her face tells the story of a very hard life in very harsh conditions.

[DanK]

Brian, welcome back! A very interesting portrait.

[Manfred M]

Welcome back from me as well.

I enjoy doing street shots in Asia. Usually people are not as paranoid about having their pictures taken there.

One comment; shooting out from under an awning or other covering puts the subject in the shade and the area behind the subject is quite bright. It doesn't work out too badly in this scene, but it is all too easy to have a distracting background in the scene when doing this.

[BrianA61]

Welcome back from me as well.

I enjoy doing street shots in Asia. Usually people are not as paranoid about having their pictures taken there.

One comment; shooting out from under an awning or other covering puts the subject in the shade and the area behind the subject is quite bright. It doesn't work out too badly in this scene, but it is all too easy to have a distracting background in the scene when doing this.

Yes. I had to take what was given and had no time to compose very well. Plus, this is from my cell phone. A lot of the brightness from the background I think comes from my processing as I used a color filter for part of it. I might go back and revisit and see if I can tone down the brightness a little and blur it a bit to keep it less distracting. Thanks for the input.