The Dog Carrier...?

Dull dull morning with rain on the way, making my way from a friend's just now and had to use the underpass under the dual carriageway ring-road (see my blip 2 days ago) . Just before I went into this one, I stopped as I liked the blue subway walls set against the cycling speed reducing barrier.

Thinking about getting a meaningful shot, I framed pretty much as here and wasn't really happy. About to give up, a woman came up from behind me, said good morning and apologised for spoiling my shot, as she walked through. Naturally, I clicked as she progressed and even set against the light, the image was only just OK.

Kind of wondering what to do next, by reflex I put the camera to my eye again and next thing I know this chap walked past, carrying this Scottie dog. With the speed of an Olympic marksman, I clicked just the one shot and both he and the opportunity were then gone.

It reminded me of those opportunist photos of the '30s and 40s, by the French photographer Henri Cartier Bresson, where timing and social statement was everything. What this man thought, I can only guess - it wasn't until I was editing it that I saw he was actually looking at me. Most folk still believe I'm from the council or something that's taking a shot of the state of the local subways and that they're spoiling my picture, such as with the woman, earlier.

Taken with my wide-ranging Nikkor 18-200mm VR zoom, the quality of which I often criticise, it still has only done a fair job. OK, it got me the picture but for a standard lens focal length used, the surrounding frame at the edges had lots of pincushion distortion and putting it through the Photoshop lens distortion filters, which should have corrected this, a further 3% counter 'barrel' had to be added manually. And, it's just not that sharp.

I did consider cropping further into the figure but it was the actual framing by the entrance and its colour that first attracted me, with the lights leading from the painted yellow through to the autumnal leaves at the other end. A lot of shadow lightening too, as the interior was an inpeneterable black.