Graham: Cyclist, Social Businessman and Conversationalist

While out riding today I met the gentleman you see in this picture. We rode together and chatted for a few miles before enjoying a coffee together in Tayvallich. Graham was on holiday in Argyll and tells me that every time he has stayed in Tayvallich over the years he has had dry weather. I believe my Argyll friends will happily club together to buy him regular stays here; it will be so worth it! Graham is a good photographer himself, and showed me some lovely, depth-filled landscapes over coffee on his Canon G10; perhaps that’s why he was so relaxed and understanding about me asking if he minded me photographing him.

Photographically, the sun was high overhead and to Graham’s right, resulting in dark eye-sockets. Not wishing to take much of Graham’s time I quickly forced the flash on to fill shadows and pick Graham out of the background; what I didn’t anticipate was the incredible effectiveness of the two wheel-reflectors and under-saddle-bag reflective strip in chucking the S95’s tiny fill flash straight back at the sensor. I tried for a while to clone the saddlebag reflector in Photoshop Elements but while I was reasonably successful, a side-by-side comparison in Lightroom left me liking the more natural reflector-dominated picture a little more. Sometimes cloning just doesn’t get the lighting natural enough, even on a tiny patch. The strong reflector distracts a little from the main focus of Graham’s face, but thankfully the trees and the seat tube of the bike provide good counteracting leading lines. The bike, (very lovely piece of engineering) is kind of a supporting subject, so a bit of artificial photo bling might be a forgivable error. Anyway, watch out for reflectors as the tiny screen of my S95 in bright sunlight didn’t reveal the problem at the time.