Battle of the sexes

[RBSinTo]

Taken earlier this summer in Kensington.
Because in my experience on the streets it is so rare to see women playing Chess, when I came across one playing with a man outside a café, their situation seemed so unusual that I stopped to watch. I really liked their intensity as they studied the board, and when the moment seemed right, grabbed this shot.
motorized Nikon F
Nikkor 180 2.8 ED AIS manual focus
Fuji 100 ISO colour slide
5.6 @ 1/125th

[armando_m]

you really captured their concentration

[Jakov Minić]

If only he was dressed in white

[RBSinTo]

Jakov,
Good observation.
It never crossed my mind.
Robert

[Frank Fremerey]

I have some trouble with the cluttered background. Would like to see it +2/3 stops more light to lift the shadow from the man's face and at f=1.4 or max f=2.8 to blur the BG more. The man in the BG behind the chess player wears the same colors as the subject, only that the trousers color and the shirt color are exchanged. The pole growing out of the woman's back is not very nice. Compositionally I would like to see the table, the faces, the board and a blurred BG. I feel you tricked yourself here by trying to bring in the legs and feet. Chess is a head game after all isn't it?

[RBSinTo]

Thanks Frank.
Everything else aside, I tried cropping this down to its essentials: Close-up of the board and the two players' faces, but I just didn't like the result.
I should have gone 2.8 @ 1/500th, and really don't recall why I didn't. It would have cleaned up the background somewhat, but because I wasn't prepared to move the chairs for fear of disturbing the players, I don't know how much cleaner it would have been.
I'll do better next time.
Robert 

[Frank Fremerey]

I was thinking of a composition that might be closed at the bottom by the table or the board, something along this line (although here it seems to me I went too far):

http://nikongear.net/revival/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=3687.0;attach=15584;image

Here I sure should have cleaned the table....

[Frank Fremerey]

I shoot with film. That's film. F...i...l...m. You remember film. It was in all the papers.

I do shoot film too and did shoot so much film that I feel very comfortable shooting both film and digital in most situations.

Gosh, digital got so good .... all I missed in digital originally were big windows instead of dark peep holes (View Finders are great today, achieved, checked) and I missed the character of the old MF glass (achieved, checked, can be used on a chip as well as on a snippet of chemical sensor) ... therefore I wholeheartedly say: Film for fun, Digital for work AND FUN !!!