Behind the Photo – Candid Portrait of a Food Truck

Steven Perdikis

November 10, 2019.

I’ve arrived. I’m early. The sun is beating down, and I haven’t eaten all day. I won’t eat for many more hours still. I’m dedicating a day off work to a worthy cause, the Leutkaemia Foundation’s annual event, Light the Night.

It’s a fund-raiser where people donate to the foundation through the purchase of lanterns to represent they they have:

  • Lost someone to Blood Cancer
  • Suffer from Blood Cancer
  • Want to support the cause

This was an event that was held on the Math Lawns of the University of Adelaide, and there was a stage, bands, food trucks, and of course, a large group of people.

That sets the stage for this shot. For this event I was wielding two cameras, both, Nikon D750, across my body on a Black Rapid camera strap.

One camera had a 24-70, the other a 70-200. This image was captured with the 70-200.

The band had started playing a song. These two people (I don’t know if they were a couple!) were about to purchase something from the Food Truck. They exclaimed wonder and celebration at that song, and locked hands, dancing, just as the proprietor of the food truck was going to take their payment.

They’re paying using their mobile phone.

This was a rapid moment, where if I hadn’t heard their sounds, or seen them dancing out of the corner of my eye, I would’ve never captured.

The real tragedy here is that I don’t know who these people are, who the foodtruck owner is (or even which food truck it was), other than the fact it was on the Northern side of the event space, which given the time, meant that sunlight came in from left of camera, and had a good old time bouncing around the place to light the scene fairly evenly.

I was shooting on Aperture priority mode, so the shutter speed in this image is rather slow, meaning there’s a bit of a blur in the original RAW file.

The stats for camera nerds:

  • Nikon D750
  • Tamron 70-200 f/2.8 @ 150mm f/6.3
  • ISO 400
  • 1/15th Second
  • No Flash
  • Shot on Aperture Priority Mode

This means that I’ve taken the image into Adobe camera raw and made a few modifications. First, a conversion to black and white (as I prefer candid moments in black and white!) – almost like a psuedo-code – if you see one of my images, and it is black and white, it’s probably a candid!

This helps to add a bit more enigma into the image, and takes away clashing, distracting colours, and makes patterns more defined.

There’s a few local exposure and contrast adjustments made, along with a slight crop to enhance the framing of this image. I darkened the phone, increased contrast in the lady’s hair, and added a vingette.

I’m a tragic for vingettes.

Now here’s the difficult, and hard part of this image. I’d love to share it with the people featured. I just don’t have a way to track them down.

Does anyone in or around Adelaide recognise either of the people depicted, or the Food Truck vendor (or even the pattern on the side of their truck)? I’d love to get this image into their hands!

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