Blog Post #32

Tales of A Day Out #2

Last weekend I had to go to London for an event at Ally Pally so thought that if time permitted I could get some street photography done in London during the same trip. It was a glorious day with strong sunshine, the like of which we haven’t seen for months. As it turned out I was done at Ally Pally by about 2pm so I headed back into central London. The first stop was lunch so I headed to my favourite Greek taverna in the area, “Real Greek”, just off St. Martin’s Lane at Leicester Square. When I came out I pondered which part of the city to head out to in order to do some photography. As I turned the corner at the Hippodrome Casino, back into Cranbourne Street and Leicester Square, I was amazed by the strong shaft of light from the west illuminating the passage from Piccadilly Circus right through to Leicester Square. It was being channelled by the high buildings on either side and was quite spectacular. I decided there and then that I had found my hunting ground for the next few hours, whilst the late afternoon sun was illuminating the street.

The kit I had with me was my Fuji X-T3 fitted with the Fujinon 23mm f2 lens. The dynamic range of the scene was extreme with very bright highlights to deep shadows so I kept that set on auto in the camera settings. I always shoot in Raw file format and this would prove to be extremely useful when it came to post processing the images. As for metering, I set it on the spot/average setting as I thought that would be best for the way I was going to have to shoot. Focussing was set to manual with focus peaking switched on, more on that later. Shutter speed varied from 250th and 500th/sec and aperture was f8 - f11. The ISO rating was set to Auto to allow it to float. One thing I also did was something I don’t usually do and that was to set the camera on silent continuous burst mode. It was obvious that this session of street photography was going to be all about street portraits given the proximity and flow of people passing down the road.

Street portraits basically fall into one of two techniques, set -up or spontaneous grab shots. If you have ever seen the work of fellow Glaswegian Dougie Wallace or Bruce Gilden you will be familiar with the later technique. As I had never really tried this I thought I would give it a go. I also decided that due to the amazing lighting, that I would be outputting these images in colour. Having decided this, right away I am out of my comfort zone on choice of technique and going down the colour route. So on to the pictures.

When I saw this couple turn the corner and head towards me I must admit the adrenaline started pumping and I though I must get this couple captured. As they approached I walked towards them and raised my camera at the last second. The continuous burst captured about 7 images of which this is my favourite. It was processed in Lightroom to accentuate the subjects and kill the background. The beauty of working in Raw format means all the detail is on the file even although the image looked slightly over-exposed. The juxtaposition of the modern looking lady with hair dyed etc., contrasts with the gentleman who looks very traditional and the way she is taking his arm looks very chivalrous.

There was an event taking place that afternoon at The Hippodrome that was attracting a large number of young women so the area was very busy. For this shot it was a case of again identifying some people coming towards me and at the last second lifting my camera and shooting on burst mode. As you can see, I am standing almost face to face with these ladies but there was no issue with them and we both moved on. I never made eye contact or turned around after I had passed them. When processing the image in Lightroom, the fake tan/skin tone was a challenge as too much would make their skin look muddy and too little left their faces a strange colour.

There seemed to be a few Hen Party groups around too. It was a similar technique to the above shots of approaching then raising the camera at the last second. This was one of about 8 sequential frames that I took and thought it was the best one. I’m pretty sure they didn’t even notice me as they passed by sipping whatever it was they has in the paper cups, I don’t think it was coffee. I tried this shot first as a portrait format, including only the two figures on right hand side, but finally settled with this landscape format as I think groups of three are better balanced aesthetics wise than two.

This is one of my favourite shots from the day. The sun was starting to get very low by this point and the colour was amazing. I spotted this young couple sitting on the stone benches around Leicester Square and thought the composition and the way their two postures fitted together was great. It was just a case of walking over to them and taking the shot. They were so wrapped up in sunbathing and phone checking that they were not aware of me being there. The uncluttered background is a bonus. There were some other features just outside of the final cropped image so I brought the focus on the the couple by cropping the extraneous details out and applying a vignette. The male’s face was in total shadow but the Raw image contained the detail that was subtly teased out using an adjustment brush in Lightroom.

This is probably my favourite shot of the day. The sun had almost gone behind the buildings when I spotted this chap standing in Leicester Square checking his phone. I knew I wanted a shot of him but with so many people around it was going to be difficult to isolate him from the mayhem. I decided to use a technique that I sometimes use whereby the camera is not up to my face as this would be too obvious, necessitating me to crouch below him. I set my camera up and walked past him with my arm straight down by my side and the camera pointing up at him. In burst mode I took about 8 shots and got the one I wanted without him being aware. Its a useful technique but it takes a bit of practice. At first the image looked underexposed slightly but processing the Raw file in Lightroom enabled me to recover shadow detail and by using the new sky/subject mask feature, work on these elements separately.

Street photography can be very challenging and I have mentioned that many times in my previous blog posts. We see far too many photos from photographers (particularly new entrants to the genre), of people walking down the street, often taken from a distance. We have all done it but to me there needs to be something else to the image other than just people walking down a street. In the above photos I have tried to show the characters as opposed to just capturing them in the street. Getting in closer certainly helps with that. I found that the busy environment helped too in that nobody really noticed me or was startled by the camera. I also like the colour in these photos and that was down mainly to the beautiful lighting conditions. Using the continuous burst mode was interesting and something I will certainly experiment with, particularly for street portraits. It means a bit more work sorting out the images to be binned (out of focus and near misses), but the success rate improves. I must have walked miles that afternoon just walking up and down people watching and taking photos but I really enjoyed it and got some good shots I believe.

I mentioned earlier that I had set my camera on manual focus and switched on the focus peaking feature (more details on the FP feature in Blog Post #19), in order to determine in the viewfinder what will be in focus. I wear glasses and sometimes getting up close to the viewfinder is difficult. I have also noticed over the past few months that the clarity in my right eye has been deteriorating and I learned this week that I have a cataract that needs an op to correct my sight. I therefore will have to depend on autofocus for a time but so be it.

I hope you have enjoyed this blog post and thank you for reading it. If you want to comment on this blog post please do so below or you can contact me by using the “Contact Me” facility in the website header.