Round the World

As part of a highly recommended three day tourist bus package we got tickets to visit three New York landmarks.  One of the places we chose to visit was the UN.  We had a fascinating tour led by a Japanese member of staff in full traditional dress.  The tour was excellent and well worth it and this was one of the images that captivated me during our time here.

I liked the simplicity of the display and the way that the chips and scuffs in the paint suggest at the harsh life of a UN peacekeeper.

I took this using my 18-55mm lens on my EOS7D at 18mm, f5.6 and 1/30th of a second at ISO4000 due to the low light in the museum area.  There doesn't appear to be a huge amount of shot noise but the large aperture has softened the focus on the far edges of the helmet.  If I had my flash gun I could have avoided some of these issues but it wasn't high on my list of items to take on our trip!

Post processing was a simple crop and addition of the watermark.

Apart from the soft focus as discussed above the main issue I have with this image is the fact that due to time constraints on the tour I couldn't set the white balance to the correct setting so the white is slightly cream coloured, it's so bad that no matter what I have tried I can't seem to correct it so I've left it as I originally shot it, maybe I need a return trip and to set the white balance correctly!