Little girl

I shot the photo of this little girl doing her homework during a workshop organised during the Photo Romania Festival 2016, which takes place in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. This workshop was dedicated to Street Photography with a twist: shooting “from the hip” instead of the classical approach, looking in your viewfinder. “From the hip” actually means shooting in the blind in a different position, with your camera at waist/hip level, or sometimes way above or under the subject.

During the workshop we passed next to a school, with kids playing football, running and screaming… like kids do, right? 🙂 I then saw this little girl, packed in her rain coat, silently drawing on a chair instead of running here and there with her schoolmates. I knew it would be a powerful photo, only if I shoot her from her level, not from the top of my 1,90 meters. The perfect moment for practicing shooting from the hip! I’m very please by how this photo is framed, without even looking in the viewfinder: the little girl is right on the rule of third spot, the chair just fills the left part of the frame, the bench the right side, and I have the other children playing behind. Like any kind of art, photography is about talent, but sometimes you need a little bit of luck, too 😀

The processing was fairly straightforward using Adobe Lightroom to turn the photo in black and white with Fujifilm‘s awesome camera profiles. Then, some tiny touches of dodge & burn to raise the overall contrast and make the girl’s coat pop out of the rest of the frame.

Do you like this photo? Click here and get an original, signed print in limited edition!

EXIFs: