Work on your subject!

This is one of the reason I hate group travel - your name get to be called when you are high on making your favorite image.  I like to take my time, if I find a subject, I will work on it, until I get the shot I want, or when the subject no longer available.
This image, taken at the Swayambhunath Stupa, the afternoon I arrived Kathmandu, if fact the first location I start to shoot, I take my time.  Many of my travel companions, hurry take out their camera, and fired off like machine gun, as if more pictures in the memory cards will make the trip?  No, more pictures will not make the trip worthy, it only waste more time in later editing.  Only more good images will make the trip more worthy. So take your time, focus on getting the image.

I spot this Nepali woman sat under the shelter of the temple structure, I saw a nice dark color on the wall, the ground, a nice harmony to the traditional dress she wore, while she started to smoke. Picking up the Canon 1Ds III mounted with EF 100/2.8L IS Macro, I preset it to ISO 200 and made a quick set up to f/3.5 and allow a 1/60 shutter speed.  Typically, for resolution of a full frame DSLR reached over 20 mpx, the traditional reciprocal rule - ie. 100mm go to 1/200s or 200mm got o 1/200s is not so effectively applied, because the image blur will be more visible with higher resolution of sensors.  My own experience is, for DSLR of over 20 million pixels, the facor would go up 1.5X, then if the resoltion upped to around 32mpx on the rumored 1Ds IV, I would push up the safe shutter by one stop.  Yes, my 100 macro is the IS version, which would give me 4 stops, but I rather believe it is less, so I set the speed to 1/60s, and just right aperture, I made this image.
As one know well when travel with other photography friends, you started to shoot and sooner or later, there are more photographers join in, sometimes until it totally ruin the scene, no difference here.  But I found, although I am the first to start shooting this Nepali woman, I am also the last one to leave her.  I waited until her almost finish her smoke, with just a small tip on her cigarette, with the right puff of smoke.