I wanted to try a bit of street photography with the new 35mm but was extremely limited on time. Knowing there's always something to see along the waterfront, I headed downcity at lunch and parked on Water Street. The plan - which worked out well, as you can see - was to compose a scene using that obscure tire-like sculpture with the skyline in the background and simply wait. To get the Bank of America Tower in proper position for the photo, though, had to stand almost in the middle of this sidewalk. The unfortunate consequence of my positioning was that several potentially interesting subjects went very wide to the street side to go around me, thus taking themselves out of the scene. These two walkers, however, didn't budge. In fact, I'm not even sure they saw me until the last minute. The "Man in Black" was talking non-stop all the way down the sidewalk, and his companion appeared to be tuning everything out. All-in-all, they do make an interesting study.
This was my second day with the new lens. The day was very grey, misty, and the buildings were often disappearing into the low cloud cover. I'm pleased with what the lens was able to do to bring out the contrast on such a flat day. It's still taking a bit of getting used to using this lens for street photography. I like how it allows me to get right up to a foreground object and it allows the placement of the human subjects to provide significant depth when offset with an interesting background. It's just going to take a bit of practice to get the timing and the placement right. For city shots, I can easily see this lens being one of my "go to" lenses, along with the 50mm.
Post processing started with a Classic filter in Topaz B&W FX. I adjusted adaptive exposure, regions, contrast, boost black, boost white, and color sensitivity sliders. A levels adjustment was added in PSE.
It seems like everything is coming toward you--the water, the sidewalk, the tire statue, the street, the men--very nice. Of course the men did not see you--they were obviously talking about those amazing Red Sox!
@cejaanderson Thanks, Jane! Funny you mention the Sox... I was hoping to find a lot of folks wearing Red Sox jackets but I don't think the weather cooperated. Fantastic game last night, though! I'm just glad I can finally get some sleep now. lol
Great depth created in this composition. Oh, I am definitely going to start following you! Your narratives are interesting and you explain how you do what you do. Clearly, your writer-self coincides with your photospher-self. I already have a question for you: Do you use Topaz as a stand alone or as a plug-in? I tried to buy a Topaz plug-in yesterday and it wasn't compatible with Aperture unless I bought more Topaz software for it to anchor on to.
@jyokota Junko, thank you! You're right, the writer and the photographer in me are often melded. lol As to Topaz, I use them as plug-ins to Photoshop Elements v10. To use with Aperture, you do need Topaz Fusion Express, but I just did a quick search on their site and it looks like a free add-on. At least, it says "download free" and there's no purchase option for it in their store.
hmmm . . . I purchased Fusion Express already for $49.99 and I tried to use Remask with it yesterday and the Topaz help desk wanted me to buy ANOTHER Topaz thing called FX Lab, another $50 if applying the -$30 they offered to make the ½ priced $70 remask work. It felt like a bait so I just canceled the whole thing. I don't have photoshop and I only use Aperture at this point . . . seems I have a lot to learn!
