Robert's Ramblings

Christmas retail mayhem takes a break in the small hours.

Shopping at midnight is not for everyone but if you detest crowds the 24hour opening times are a blessing. I shudder imagining being in this scene a few hours earlier when the walkways would have been packed shoulder to shoulder.
Easy parking, no waiting queues, forty percent off everything including crowds! I like it!

The last time I took photographs in a shopping centre I was politely but firmly asked to put my camera away or I would be escorted from the premises. This time I played it a little low key and looked for places to place my camera without a tripod. Retail Christmas is garish already so I don't mind extending the theme with a hdr rendering to match.

I wanted great depth of field for this image so I set the lens to f/16, made a guess where the hyper-focal distance would be for this lens/zoom/fstop combination. I then pointed the lens at an object at that distance and performed an initial pre-focus in AF mode. Once I had pre-focused the lens I set it back to MF mode, placed the camera into position and took three frames. In this way I kept my actions as 'non-photographer' as possible and succeeded in bringing both the shopping and photographs home.


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 355 - Forty Percent Off Everything'. 0.4s f/16 ISO160 17mm