Leafy Tunnel

Well, it's not black & white but it does have people (a person).

Look at all that green! Shot with my 35mm f1.8 @ f5.6, with just a little bit of post to boost the contrast (particularly the greens) and darken a few of the shadows in the foreground to lead your eye into the background. I think I'll revisit this place when the leafy tunnel has regrown again.

Windows says the max f-stop of my 1.8 lens is 1.6. What?! Not that I'm excited for the added 0.2 or anything (it's a DX lens after all), I just think it's odd that the numbers don't exactly match.

Hat trio

I guess my previous picture uploading woes have been resolved. I can upload from my computer once again. Fanks, Google!

Taken during last week's Chinese New Year celebrations in London. Despite the fairly decent weather I decided not to go to the main stage like last year, I instead walked around to see what else was going on. I tried to walk through Chinatown just after midday, I say "tried" as it was completely packed with people. I just ended up walking through a bunch of side roads, seeing if anything caught my eye.

These three ladies were the only non-Asian people that I saw who seemed to be into the spirit of the day, and that line of conical hats really stood out in the crowd. I kind of shot from the hip, and was pretty lucky to get the image so straight. Normally when I try to blind shoot the image is crooked, the subject is out of frame or my camera focused on something else completely (happens a lot with my not-very-fast Tamron lens).

I can't really decide whether I like it in black & white or colour. In colour it's still fairly neutral, and you're still drawn to the three ladies who have purple toy dragons.

I like 'em both.

Left Out

The way the girl is gazing off into the distance makes it look like she wasn't included in the trio's game, but she wasn't really. She was just looking towards her mother who was out of frame.

The camera sometimes lies.

Spider Hunters

I saw these kids climbing trees in the woods behind my house in the Philippines. What they were doing was looking for spiders, which they would later pair up to fight against each other. Mr. Orange decided to climb the trees, while Mr. Red was on the lookout, directing Mr. Orange to where the big arachnids were.

I kept this shot in colour rather than convert to black & white as the orange and red t-shirts contrasted really well against the green leaves. The colour also helped to define the imaginary rule-of-thirds lines; the picture is divided vertically by the two trees flanking the diagonal trunk, as well as horizontally by the dark green tree canopy up top and light green scrubland down below. The kids sit nicely on the horizontal lines, with the diagonal trunk and Mr. Red's face leading your eye upwards to Mr. Orange.

Tail feathers

This black & white conversion thing I'm on is really addictive :)

I saw this man in the park sitting in front of a sprinkler, one of those sprinklers that rocks back-and-forth, spraying in a fan shape. The shape reminded me of a peacock's tail feathers. I just had to wait a few seconds for the sprinkler to tilt upwards, fortunately he was so engrossed in his book to give a damn about me pointing my lens in his direction.

Like Daido

I don't really blow out the contrast in my pictures (I don't feel it's really conducive to the ones-and-zeroes "perfection" of digital cameras), but after watching Daido Moriyama's documentary Near Equal (or, Stray Dog of Tokyo) on YouTube I thought I'd have a go.

I tried it on this all-black clad lady set against a white background and I think it turned out pretty neat. This is also one of the first "let me try and shoot people from the hip like a stealthy street photographer and not look like a perv" shots I ever tried.

What I like about Moriyama's style is that he takes photos of pretty much anything, finding beauty and interest in subjects most people would ignore completely, and he did most of it with a simple Ricoh compact film camera. He also doesn't mind snapshots either. Some photographers don't like the word (I sometimes have that internal struggle of trying to justify snapping away like a maniac) but he revels in snapshots.

It also makes me wish I had a camera that wasn't so bulky and imposing, yet still feature-full. Something like a Fuji X20. The silver and black one is nice... yeah... yeah... yeah...



Here's a nice video by Tate Modern about Daido Moriyama, a bit like a concise version of the full Near Equal documentary. And it's brought up-to-date as he's now shooting in digital (but still with a simple compact camera).

Family affair

A candid shot of Vinny, my godson.

Over the weekend I was at a family celebration and, being the guy with a half-decent camera (i.e., non-smartphone, non-point & shoot) I automatically became the day's "official" photographer. That meant taking the typical posed and organised photos to document the event.

Most people there were savvy to candids; you point a camera at a person and as soon as they see you they usually change their whole persona. I saw my godson playing in the garden, looking through a glass door and, seeing how he wasn't concerned with my camera at that moment took the opportunity for a non-posed shot.

Just the right amount of stuff I like: candid style, reflections, interactions and of course a nice black & white conversion.

Bubbles

Taken outside Tate Modern.

This was the second time I'd seen the man with a giant bubble maker, which was literally loops of rope tied to the ends of a couple of wooden sticks. He would hold the sticks, dip the rope into a bucket of soap and let the wind blow into it. The first time I saw this I was captivated like a little kid. I'd taken a few photos but nothing really interesting other than documenting the event. I suppose I was too busy watching all the bubbles being made (it was a really windy day). This time I saw a toddler with his father who was lifting him up towards the bubbles so he could pop them. I was able to capture this nice diagonal as the toddler reached up for some bubbles which were just a bit too high for him :)

Lunch break

Back to people-watching.

I spotted these builders tucking into a few bags of the old "Golden Arches" near the steps of the Albert Memorial and liked how their sitting positions almost mirrored the corner statue behind them. I suppose I could have waited for them to mirror the statue completely, but the man in the centre didn't have a shawl and the man in the lower right would never turn into an elephant.

Also note the 2 kids horseplaying around at the pedestal. I didn't even notice the suplex stance at the time.

In amongst the birds

35mm prime time.

Shot from the hip, I think, back when I knew a lot less about my camera settings. Program auto mode explains the really shallow depth of field. 1/1000 @ f/2.2? Yikes! I definitely wouldn't use those settings now! The shallow DOF makes it look like I was on the ground when I took it.
I'm pretty sure I was also trying to get the person in frame (she was feeding the pigeons, after all), but this works just as well.

Must use 35mm prime more often...

Rich girl

This girl was walking through a park carrying an oversized wooden pound sign under her arm, and that's enough of a reason to take a photo.

She has to be rich, she has big money! :-P

I Like You.

A street shot taken some time last year. The weather's been mostly crappy recently so I decided to look in my pics 'archive'.

I had my 35mm lens on at the time and saw this bit of graffiti in an alley somewhere in Soho. There weren't many people walking through the alley but I put the camera to my eye and half-pressed and waited. Fortunately the man that ended up walking into frame was too busy walking fast to look into the lens and didn't really notice me taking the photo.

More street photos to come, whenever...

Lego jacket

Strange fashion choices ahoy:

I won't knock it, I think her style is kind of interesting. But I don't know how comfortable it is to have a bag strap over the Lego blocks. Surely the weight of her bag is digging the blocks into her shoulder...?

Talk to the animals

I don't think the pigeon understands what you're saying unless you say it with bread.

Trumpeter

Just off Leicester Square I heard what I thought at the time was a trumpeter busking. A little more playing and I started to think that the notes weren't coming from a trumpet at all. I navigated the crowds and followed the sound. That's when I saw the musician in question.

This man was actually "doot-doot-dooting" into the traffic cone, which amplified his song above the general cacophony of tourists and traffic. I don't remember the song he was "performing" but it was the only song in his repertoire and it was pretty catchy.

Update (July 2013): I heard this guy again, this time near Covent Garden. The song he was dooting was "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong. It was the exact same song as the one in Leicester Square. His repertoire hasn't changed and his timing was still very much off. I suppose if it ain't broken...

The artist

I liked that he was totally focussed on painting the water and greenery of the park. If I did this I would probably be looking over my shoulder every few minutes.

 

So zen. And very green.

Kimono

You don't see this everyday in London...

This lady stood out so well in the crowd, and her look was a refreshing change from all the backpacks, chinos and denim worn by regular tourists. I wish I was able to get more pictures of her kimono, but it was a pretty busy day when I took this, and it was right beside The Ritz hotel next to the bus stop and tube entrance to Green Park, so crowds of people came as standard.

...and his master

I saw this man looking intently at his dog, and for a second the dog looked at him then looked away just as quickly. It's like a role reversal, normally dogs are keen for their owner's attention while the owner gets on with his day but this dog seemed distracted, perhaps bored. Maybe he was expecting to chase a ball or a stick instead of sitting on the grass and be stared at. Or there's a squirrel somewhere in the trees.

Deep concentration, on both sides, on different things.

One way

It's nice when things come together in a totally unexpected way.

As I was walking back from a day in the park (sunny!) I saw a woman in a wedding dress on Portobello Road. An unusual situation I think, it had this whole "runaway bride" feeling about it. There were a lot of people walking in the opposite direction, getting in the way of my shot. I was also in line with a bunch of her friends walking behind her in the same direction so I just decided to shoot "from the hip" rather than bring the camera up to my eye. The lens was locked at 18mm and I just clicked when there was a break in foot traffic and moved on. Further down the road people were stopping in the street, taking out their cameraphones and just snapping away, which is probably less intimidating and in-your-face than a DSLR with a fat lens on it.

When I looked at the pic afterwards I think I got lucky. The people in frame were walking to the left, except the bride (and friend), nobody was in front of me, the "One way" arrow was in the centre of the frame pointing in the direction of the bride's path and the bride turned her head to look back at her friends. I don't know if there's any "theories" or "rules" with black & white photography but I did it with this because the buildings and bunting (all the colours in general, actually) were really distracting. As a black & white shot you're drawn more to the white of her dress.

100% unplanned and unframed but I think the different individual elements lined up nicely.

Up in the air

Moments like this are one reason I like having my camera with me.

(46mm f/5 1/4000 ISO-400)

I noticed a small group of people in the park, holding balloons, having their picture taken. I didn't really pay much attention, then they released the balloons. And they all looked up, some with their cameraphones because of "VIDEO EVERYTHING OTHERWISE IT NEVER HAPPENED!".

After the shot I realised some of the balloons were latex gloves. Medical students? Health & Safety officials? Simple balloon shortage?