Amirah Al Idrus, Photo #1, In Transit

The stairs leading up to the Green/Yellow lines at the College Park Metro Station, May 31, 2013.

The looming staircase forms a leading line that draws the eye deep into the image. My challenge when composing the shot was placing the staircase in the center while keeping aware of the rule of thirds. I managed to place the bends in the handrail a third down from the tip and from the sides. My favorite aspects of this image are the contrast between light and shadow and the suggestion that a journey is about to begin.

Travelers head to their trains at Union Station, Washington, D.C., May 31, 2013.

To take this photo and the one below, I had to crouch down. I felt extremely self-conscious, as if at any minute, someone would point at me and laugh, or worse, tell me to stop being creepy. No one did, which made me feel better. As with the photo above, I tried to use the shadows cast onto the floor as leading lines. I tried to convey a sense of movement, with one or two travelers in sharp focus. I think that I could work on this, as the two people in the middle are relatively sharp compared to the rest of the image, but there is still a bit of blurring. I would like to improve at photographing movement and speed. It was also difficult to compose this according to the rule of thirds as the crowd never stopped moving. I tried to achieve a better composition via cropping, but I couldn't do anything about the space between the two travelers in focus.

A man walking to his train at Union Station, Washington, D.C., May 31, 2013.

I feel that this photo captures movement more successfully than the previous one. I must have taken a dozen photos of people's legs (hence my self-consciousness!) before I got lucky with this one. I eliminated distracting elements in the background by cropping, and played a little with the burn tool. My favorite thing about this is that only part of the subject is in focus, while the rest of him is blurry. I could still improve on making the relatively sharp parts even sharper/more in focus, but I feel that this image shows movement effectively.

Things to think about:

Improving manual focus

The sport setting

Capturing the moving object in sharp focus while the background is blurry

Trying to compose with the camera and not relying solely on cropping later

Be more confident when photographing people