Tag Archives: people

Old Man and Young Boy

Old man and young child

Photo by Bill Hunter, taken in China, 1982. He was teaching summer courses on statistics and industrial engineering in China before China was still mostly closed to foreigners. After the courses he took a week or two vacation to visit a China few foreigners had seen to that point. See more photos of China in 1982.

See more photos by Bill Hunter.

Related: Sign in China Promoting Safe Bicycle RidingPink Lotus Flower in Yangshuo, ChinaStone Bridge at the Confucius Temple in Jianshui, China

Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho, Bangkok, Thailand

large reclining Buddha (in gold) with inscriptions on large feet

The Reclining Buddha statue at Wat Pho is 15 meters tall and 46 meters long. The statue and the building that houses it were created in 1832.

Related: Statues, Grand Palace, Bangkok, ThailandNational Museum of Korea in SeoulBorobudur in Java, IndonesiaGetting An Early Start Traveling Around the World in Bangkok, Thailand

Wedding Photo Shoot – Hoi An, Vietnam

Wedding photo shoot with Hoi An Japanese Bridge in the background

Wedding photo shoot with the Japanese Bridge in the background, Hoi An, Vietnam. Hoi An has a very touristy but still nice and picturesque old town (it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site). The bridge dates to the 16th or 17th century.

Related: Rice Drying on the Street, Hoi An, VietnamTemple of Literature (Văn Miếu – Quốc Tử Giám, 文廟) Hanoi, VietnamCircumhorizontal Arc (Fire Rainbow) in Hoi An, Vietnam

VW Vanlife in Kenya

Photo of my family at a campsite in Kenya with our VW Van

This is a photo (by my father) of my early experience with vanlife. My family took this VW Van in Kenya when I was a kid. We only spent a couple weeks in Kenya before living in Nigeria for a school year.

I remember at one point getting stuck in a dried out riverbed in a game park after having passed a small herd of elephants just a short while before. We had to get out and push the van free and watch it zoom forward to safe ground while I thought about the elephants getting curios and deciding to see what the fuss was about. It was quite fun once I was back in the van.

Related: Exploring Vanlife in the USACheetahs in KenyaKenya Game Park Safari photosElephants, Kenya (on a later trip)

How to Frame Photos of People Well

Most of the posts on this blog are just photos. This post is a bit different in that it is a post about taking photos.

I actually owned a camera that used film. The barrier to talking multiple photos was much greater then – not only the cost but also you only have so many shots left so you can’t “waste” too many. Digital cameras are great for quite a few reasons but one of the best is how easy it is to just snap a bunch of photos and hope some are great.

You really can make quite a bit better photos without much effort. Just paying a bit of attention to good photos can help a great deal.

John Hunter at Bryce National Park

John Hunter, Bryce National Park

One thing I find amusing is selfies actually take advantage of something good photographers knew a long time ago. To get good photos of people put them in the foreground. You still see it today, but it was much more common (like 98% of these type of photos), where the people are tiny dots next to some tourist attraction. Selfies go a bit overboard with putting the person in the foreground (most of the time) but they are often better than the tiny dot people photos.

I still remember the photo a professional photographer took of my grandparents at their house where I saw this lesson and have remembered it since. The people were put at the front of the yard so they took up a good 50% of the photo but it was staged to capture their home of 40 years. So often this type of photo is with the people little dots in front of the house with the framing of the house nearly the same.

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