The Engineers

Pictured here are (from left to right) Fatma, Nourhan and Shaimaa who are all studying Engineering. English for them is just a small added-on part of their university life but they always make the effort to come to my classes and throw themselves into whatever I ask of them helping to make this class one of my favourites.

When I asked if they wouldn't mind posing for a photo, their immediate response was wondering what was I going to do with it. There is a big problem out here (and in Oman too, although I don't remember ever mentioning it) where photos of students are given a vulgar pornographic transformation using Photoshop and then used to embarrass and generally cause distress. Facebook and mobile phones have opened up social interaction beyond anything seen before in the Arab world but also provide idiots with easy bait for the aforementioned doctoring.

I explained that I am a member of a photography journal where photographers from all over the world post pictures about their lives and that hundreds of people will look at my photo of them and what I write. They made me promise not to post it on Facebook or Twitter and that I assured them that if anyone stumbled across the photo by chance (which happened once in Oman through a lucky Google search) I would delete it.

As they started to warm to the idea, I then showed them my One year ago blip of my Omani students. They didn't need any more convincing after that and happily posed for a couple of shots, their favourite of which was this one.*

*In my recentish move to full manual control (except for auto focus) over the camera, I seem to have messed up the shot a little (Nourhan is a little fuzzy); not sure what I did wrong, so constructive criticism welcomed.

Edit:
A smaller aperture would help the fuzziness but then I would have had to slow the shutter down (which wouldn't help the focus) or whack the ISO up (which would have reduced the quality). The natural light was provided by the late-afternoon sun and I didn't want to use the flash. What's the best compromise for the exposure settings in this situation?