Time in San Francisco – street photography
Published by on November 6th, 2008 10 Comments »
It’s work away from home time once more with another two weeks in chilly San Francisco.
Unlike my last trip back in July, I am staying down town in a pretty decent – and very comfortable – hotel which is gratefully within good walking distance of the office (I cannot bear to use cabs for transport unless absolutely necessary).
Walking the streets
I learned the value of spending time walking around, even if it was merely to and from work, in my first trip to the city over a year ago. Always with my small, trusty Sanyo HD2 camera to hand, I grabbed a thoroughly satisfying photograph of the Palace Hotel one morning. I’m doing the same this time, though more deliberately on the hunt for candid street shots as I make my way around.
Rather than be conspicuous, I’m keep the small camera almost hidden within my hand at my side. It means capturing a something specific is a little hit and miss, but that’s the beauty of this kind of candid photography, Through the vast majority of shots are out of focus, blurred due to motion, or just plain completely off-target, some do turn out and they are always a pleasant surprise. Carrying the camera at around waist level creates a very different view on the scene which I find pretty interesting.
Results
Two of the four successful images can be seen here, above, with others in the flickr pages. I hope you like them as much as I do.
The four images as of the writing of this blog post came out of around 70 photographs shot over two days on the morning route between hotel and office – the light being far too low in the evening for a small lens camera such as the HD2.
More to come, I hope, and more varied shots, too, as I should have a little exploration time over the weekend. Finally, on my third trip to this city, the chance for a little sight-seeing!
I am just starting out with this, but you’re looking for superb examples, I recommend Water Molotov for some thoroughly stunning San Francisco street photography.
10 Responses to “Time in San Francisco – street photography”
That first pic is awesome, The shifty character looks like he just did something bad or is thinking about it
Did you shoot these in black and white or edit afterwards?
Thank you! The guy in the first shot was there every morning (except this morning, interestingly). I think he’s merely waiting his transport to work.
These were shot in colour on the Sanyo HD2, then post-processed in Photoshop.
wow Neil,
Your sick with the camera dude!!!! I like the both pics!!! shaddy mystery vibe to it. Beautiful!!!
I used to use my camera on black and white mode and various others all the time…. but fairly recently have been just using colour and doing the tweeks after in ps.
@Augie: Cheers, Dawg!
@Forest: Post processing is the way to go. I think you need the additional control on how the image is converted to black and white rather than trusting the camera. I tend to look through each of the colour channels as selecting one of those can often add additional uniqueness to the scene.
nice shoot bro, what camera do you use for taking those awesome photograph? you really know how to practice black white photography. great.
@Hot Cam: Just a small Sanyo HD2 for those. It was a challenge and many potential shots did not work out, mostly due to the typical digital camera delay between pressing the trigger and the shot actually being taken. From this week I have use of a Canon DSLR, so it’ll be interesting to see what I can get from that.
I prefer to take the pictures in colour and use Adobe Elements to B/W the image and adjust the “grade” of the black and white , depending on the mood I am trying to portray.
Absolutely the only way to work in my opinion. And ten points for not simply converting the colour image to greyscale!
Careful decisions while post processing can make all the difference between an OK image and a fabulous one.
Black and white is always so mysterious.
–Matt Bamberg
Author, Greatest-Photo-Opportunities-San-Francisco