flags

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After the dust settled a bit after the Chinese New Year parade ended, people were walking and standing still all at the same time. Did that make sense? I’m not sure. But in general, people were EVERYWHERE. I took it upon myself to just walk around and try to capture some of the bystanders when I ran into a group of young boys throwing these bang snaps on the ground. If you’re not familiar with what bang snaps are, they look like this little ball of paper and when you throw them down on the floor or another hard surface, they make a really loud noise. They are most common during Chinese New Year but are completely safe.

But I realized that I wasn’t the only one who noticed this group of boys. This little boy in blue was sitting on top of his dad’s shoulders watching the bigger boys have fun. After they ran out of the bang snaps, the little boy’s attention went straight from looking down to looking up at the flags. As he was reaching for them, I captured this image.

After I captured it, I couldn’t help but get the 1995 Skee-Lo song out of my head, I Wish. I bet he wished that he could have been a little bit taller.

My camera settings for this image are F4 at 1/500th sec and ISO 250 with my Sony A7II and 35mm prime lens.

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So heres the thing, even if you think that you’re going to get a beautiful sunset/sunrise, it doesn’t always happen. But even if you do get the gorgeous colors in the sky, sometimes you just can’t get the composition right. Or you left your camera battery at home. Or a person gets in your shot. You just gotta roll with the punches and you can’t get upset about it. You’re not always going to get the best picture every time you go out. You’re going to get what was meant to be. And sometimes that’s poo. But you just gotta keep on going. Gotta keep on trying and stay persistent.

This is the pep talk I like to give myself when I’ve been out 4 times this week and still haven’t gotten anything I’m totally satisfied with.