E-P7 hanging out downtown SF, jpegs

JustGeorge wrote:

Raist3d wrote:

JustGeorge wrote:

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 !;-) .

First of all, thanks for writing in such detail and communicating how you feel about it! I really really appreciate it, and no, I wouldn't think twice at all about asking you. If this is the kind of reply I get, I rather ask people like you!

Yes, you answered at least quite a bit of what I was wondering. It's also interesting what you say on B&W because I do try to do B&W street photography also, even at night. But this time I wanted the colors around that place, since there seemed to be many.

I understand what you mean about story in a photo, though for me ironically the story is most of the time secondary or I should say- not the reason I first took the shot, and often my shots do have a story but it's kind of after the fact. Maybe subconsciously I see it.

I am looking usually more for the so called lines, composition, light, often a particular action. If a story emerges from that great but not the reason.

I am sharing below a shot that is one of my favorites at night I took some years ago. I guess there's a story here, but I love the tones, the two guys, etc.

And one from day of the dead, that I think it appropriately fits in B&W

I have to admit I oscillate between color & B/W. PENF / EP-7 have some nice B&W profiles to experiment out of the box in JPEGS. For the night while I still experiment with them that way, I resort to DXO more often thanks to deepPRIME for some "finals" but the JPEG engine of the EP7 is often surprising.

I really hope OMDS gets a PenFMKII done well or EP7 successor with the new JPEG AI noise reduction.

PS: The cyclist shot I actually reduced the color in some final shots I did, I wanted it to look a tad more monochromatic. But that was how the EP7 took it, profile 2. I guess profile 3 would make it "color pop."