I'm not a fan of street photography, but I really, really liked this set. Color, night, a great combination. Bookmarked this post.
Thanks for the look, that's high praise. If I may as, out of curiosity, what kind of street photography if any you generally feel attracted to. In this case it seemed to be the night and color, but anything else in particular like actions? expressions? movement? etc.
As one example, the 6th (?) image, the masked passenger riding in the bus: the first things I noticed were the colors (can I call them night colors?), which made me stop & look at the image rather than just pass over it, then I saw the passenger and the whole image came into "focus", so to speak; where was he going to or coming from, why the bus, the mask hid his state of mind, was there something more to the story.
Another example is the image of the blue escalator: again, the blue color caught my eye, then I noticed the folks at the bottom, are they coming, going, waiting? And I think I would like to ride that escalator because of the color; again, night colors, to me.
Most B&W street photography disappoints me because I want the "color", or rather tones, (black, white and grays) to pop. No muddy blacks, good mid-tone gradation; highlights can be blocked if there's nothing of import in them. One of the things that drew me to the PEN-F were the Monochrome profiles; over the past 6 years, since I got my PEN-F, I've wasted lots of time trying to find the right exposure without having to resort to PPing. Back in the late 70's, early 60's, I tried processing B&W film and making prints, but never had my own darkroom, so I relied on community darkrooms where you really didn't know what chemicals you were using (was that
really D76 in that bottle?). So my attempts at B&W to date have been failures, and maybe because of that, I hold all other B&W images to a higher standard. Unfairly, beyond a doubt.
Unless there's an interesting implied story, of course. But the tones of the image usually have to stop me from just glancing at the image.
The images of the bicycle rider and bus, both in motion, are night and color, even if not as saturated as some of the others. But they also contain action which I can relate to. And I like the "night" colors of the passengers boarding the bus.
I think "street photography" should at least imply a story, however fleeting, and not just be a documentary image. But I will stop and look at nice colors even without a story, especially in night images.
Reading over the above, I sure hope that answers your question. And for the record, I really don't know what I'm talking about, all of this is just my intuition based on years of trying to learn what I'm doing. And I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I'm in a very small minority in my feelings about street photography. But I really did like this set.
I bet you think twice about asking me a question in the future !;-) .
