This picture requires some explanation. This is a small portion of a crowded bus I saw in Havana. 8449 is the number of the particular bus. I love the expressions of the people by the window.

My pictures usually don’t require technical explanations since I only do modest post-processing, mainly lightening shadows, tweaking colors, adding an S-curve, and perspective-correcting buildings. I’ll come clean to say that this image is highly manipulated. Though I didn’t change any of the content.

The original framing was much wider, covering about half of the bus. The picture was okay, and I created a version that cropped in a bit to emphasize the people on the bus. However, I realized that only two of the windows contained the most interesting people. Thus, I wanted to crop further. Except with the Sony A7C II, the 33MP didn’t give me enough resolution.

I took my first crop and upscaled the image in Topaz Photo AI, creating a 115MP image. I then cropped further, resulting in this 25MP image. I added film-ish touches, including grain and black-and-white conversion. I would love to say I saw this exact composition and I shot it as is. Alas, that wasn’t the case.

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