Some of the shots below were taken on the same trip out and even though I took a few lenses I found my 100mm to be particularly suited to ‘street’ photography in the market and surrounding area. The rest were picked-off by pre-planned trips to get the specific shot or were ‘grab shots’ when I saw something I thought would work for the assignment.
Straight/Curved
Believe it or not, these shots were taken just a few hundred metres apart, either side of St Martin’s near the Bullring area in Birmingham.
100mm f5.6 400th/sec
The first shot – ‘Straight’ – was taken facing the Digbeth area of town in a location I wanted to shoot for a while. It’s very close to the new, shiny, clean and modern Bullring development, literally across the road. The buildings are old and run down, I suspect from the design vacuum that was the sixties and seventies (architecturally speaking). It’s a busy image with all of the vertical lines and I felt best suited to B&W. Almost every part of the picture is straight save for the people, traffic light cowls and signs; there is nothing natural about. Even the small amount of car entering on the right is pretty angular and completes the 100% urban scene. The composition is out of kilter from a balance perspective, I particularly wanted to create something like the image ‘Albuquerque’ by Lee Freidlander, p39, ‘The Photograph’ (ISBN 978-0-19-284200-8).
100mm f5.6 500th/sec
‘Curved’ appeals to me for very different reasons. Even though it is in fact another type of hostelry just the other side of St Michaels from the ‘Straight’ image, it couldn’t be more different. At a glance, one could be forgiven for thinking it’s a picture of a roller-coaster – closer inspection reveals it to be a modern bar near to a city centre shopping area. The curve from this angle is very dramatic, and the tree balances the steep drop and helps to add interest and texture. Given the topic and the contrast from the first picture, closer inspection reveals two secrets. The first is that nearly all of the curves in the picture are made of short, straight lines which sets it against the first one. Straight, chopped-up and re-purposed. The 2nd is that the most photographed ‘curve’ in the area is the iconic Selfridges building, which I was determined not to use because it’s becoming a little clichéd as a view in Birmingham. Look at the reflection in one of the of the glass panels to the right near the tree. Oh well!
Light/Dark
100mm f2.8 640th/sec
The next pair are looking at the contrast of light and dark, and with these I’ll start with ‘dark’. At the same market mentioned above I noticed this starling sitting atop a burger grill, waiting for something to scavenge. The longest lens I had with me was the 100mm so I did do some cropping of the final shot to take out some sky at the top and keep the overall shot dark and foreboding. I took the shot, not thinking that I’d get a black hole on the final print but I feel it works because any detail there may have detracted from the bird, which is an integral part of the shot. On the full size picture the detail in the rusty beam adds some texture and it’s actually a surprise to see it’s new enough to have a web address! I kept the top of the burger sign to show what the bird was after and the hanging cloth adds to the overall dark and to some extent the sad and depressing nature of the scene.
100mm f2.8 1/8000 sec
What is surprising is the scene at the other end of the same run of stalls, which is my choice for ‘light’. Firstly the low, direct sun of winter provides fantastic illumination and seems to increase the relief of the image. Secondly, the pastel shades are really brought to life by the quality of the light which has a ‘hard’ quality to it.
This was also taken with a 100mm lens from low down and using the DoF preview button I was able to ensure that I got a good spread of in-focus area but also retain some out of focus area front and back to show depth. This is important because the longer lens would have a flattening effect otherwise; getting close with a wide angle would have indicated some perspective by making the horizontals converge towards the back of the scene but that wasn’t an option in this case as I only had a 100mm and 50mm lenses with me.
Liquid/Solid
85mm f4.0 250th/sec
A new cat in the house led to this theme – after his first session in the garden. While in the garden I noticed how the water had frozen in the bird bath and I liked how the blue sky of the sunny day was reflected in the ice. I always put some hot water in there when I notice it, as I know the birds can die without water in cold weather. When we went back in the house my cat jumped on the sink to get some water from the tap as he likes the running water when he can get it.
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100mm f6.3 100th/sec
As far as the images themselves are concerned, there is a small amount of camera shake on the birdbath but it only shows up on the stone, almost making it look softer than the ice which I quite liked. A little cropping and shallow depth of field also look effective I think. I tried de-saturation first to enhance the cold look but decided that the colour of the sky was preferable.
This got me thinking – water as both a liquid and solid is very obvious choice for this exercise but what struck me was the contrasts in what each state leads to: life or death. The other contrast in this particular liquid/solid theme is the poverty of hard work in finding some accessible water and the total luxury of having it there at the twist of tap.
For the liquid part of the pair I cropped it slightly to fill the frame with the water and cat; at 100th there was also movement in the fast moving tongue. The high contrast conditions meant I had to use a little fill-light in post processing to lift the shadows as well as the recovery tool for the bleached highlights – no amount of compensation in-camera either way was going cope with that scene!
Heavy/Light
100mm f5.6 100th/sec
The market yielded some interesting shots and the one I originally thought would make a good image for image for heavy left me with a dilemma – a relative one. Melons are ‘relatively’ heavy, dense fruits and always catch me out when I pick them up. However, where do you go for light?
Back to the melon though. In the market it looked big and heavy but looking at the shot back home in an isolated way it lost its weight somewhat – nothing to provide perspective. That said, it really reminds me of a bowling ball and when I see it on-screen I want to overlay some finger holes in Photoshop to complete the picture and really give it some weight. Not allowed here of course…
40mm (equiv.) f2.2 400th
I was mulling things over as to what could be used as a light-weight contrast when a visit to a trade show (work, not toys!) provided the material – bubbles! Both are basic spherical (type) shapes but very clearly, one of them floats. The balance of the each shot is quite different, with the broad shape of the only whole melon drawing the eye and the texture betrayed by the soft light falling on it. In the ‘light’ image the eye is drawn bottom-right to top-left, almost telling a story, with the final chapter the freedom of the smaller bubble in the upper-left corner.
Moving/Still
10th/sec f11 40mm (equiv)
Moving is easy – you can set your tripod up almost anywhere in a town and you capture some movement with a slow shutter speed. I was thinking about movement and thought it would be great to have something moving in place that is normally very still. That’s when I thought about a church or cemetery; that usefully also lends itself to combine a contrast in one shot.
I chose a view near a path so that I could wait for someone to walk in front of the camera; I made sure the composition was something identified the place as a still graveyard but without a single stand-out feature. That said I timed the shot so the passer-by was to the left on the most prominent grave. I had my ND filters to hand but in the end I didn’t need them – the day was dark enough to get the effect I wanted despite the reflected light from the snow. That said, I did drop the ISO to 100, below optimum for the camera I was using (200 ISO is best for dynamic range) and f11 on a 2x crop camera also gets you into diffraction territory. You can’t really tell DR is limited on the RAW image, which I de-saturated slightly to accentuate the bleakness of the shot as well as cropped to 2:3.
60th/sec f8 40mm (equiv)
For the ‘still’ image, the cemetery provides plenty of scope! Even when people are there, movement is normally muted and slow, with plenty of reverent stillness in use out of respect if not religion. Almost as if the living don’t want to make the dead jealous by rushing!
‘Statues’ may not be such a common game for children these days but each of us knows that ‘still’ is a bye-word people made of stone. Having a figure in the frame contradicts the split-second capture that is photography – it will be still whether the camera looked for a 1000th/sec or one whole day. I chose a narrow aperture to keep as much in focus as possible and made sure that the empty bench was clearly in shot to keep any human movement away from thought. Strangely there was no birds and being winter, cats and squirrels were also absent. For this image I was able to use ISO200 and because I had my tripod I was sure that even at 60th/sec there was no chance camera shake – a real no-no for a picture that showed ‘still’! I used just under 1 stop of compensation to ensure the darker areas captured the necessary detail. Post processing was just to crop to 2:3, add a slight vignette to the corners (very slight!) and add sharpening to the RAW image.
Sweet/Sour
250th/sec f2.5 40mm (equiv)
I had several ideas for sweet, the first sparked by a fantastic red cake I purchased for my wife. The only problem with that was that I didn’t get my camera out quick enough! With that opportunity gone I took my camera on a trip into to town as I knew we would be passing a few stores that I know had plenty of sweet fair on display. While I was on my way to a cake shop I passed a new artisan bakery and thought how attractive the meringues looked in the window. I didn’t expect to have to photograph through glass and didn’t have a polariser with me so I had to choose an angle that kept my reflection out of the frame. I framed it carefully to get the glass shelves straight (well, as possible from an angle) and waited to get the person
in the background into an interesting pose. As this shop was in an arcade it meant pushing up the ISO to get a decent shutter speed so things stayed sharp; the cameras stabilisation helps with camera shake but not with a moving subject of course. The wide aperture allowed me to blur the background enough to get some separation for the meringues but not so much to lose the human interest. For me this shouts sweet as meringue is made almost entirely of sugar; the surroundings also suggest sweet smells with the preparation area clearly visible in the background.
0.4/sec f11 105mm
For sour I was struggling to think of something that would really convey it and with a lack of people around to get some facial contortions to give a proper demonstration I decided to make a shot by getting something sour that could I could spell with – a jar of lemons left over from Christmas fitted the bill perfectly! On their own there was little interest so I added a glass that looked like it had been knocked over; I felt that conveyed something fitting with the sour theme. I chose a work surface as I thought it would look ‘right’ in that sort of place which meant lighting was a little awkward. I used natural light from the window with a silver reflector placed on the opposite side from the window to brighten the scene and fill in the shadows. Despite using a tripod I did push the ISO up to 500 and made sure the mirror was locked up to keep things sharp – I also focused manually due to the close proximity and chose f11 to make sure there was plenty of depth of field. The lemon slices had lost some of the normally vibrant colours due to being processed so I boosted yellow saturation a little in post processing.
Transparent/Opaque
Initially I was thinking I might go for something ‘obviously there’ for transparent, like a glass or something that is clear but let’s you know it’s there by distortion or other mechanism. I decided that actually it would be more fun to bring something often forgotten to the fore by giving it the title ‘Transparent’. In this case the Deli
f2.2 250th/sec 40mm (equiv)
in Covent Garden on the picture server the purpose really well. At night with the food cabinets lit, it’s easy to forget the glass is even there and in this shot there is almost no difference between the glass and the open hatch. Without transparency, this shop would not exist because people would not be able to see all the food available to tempt them in, despite the menu on the side.
From a photographic perspective I used quite a high ISO and wide aperture on this picture to make sure I had no camera shake. On reflection I could have reduced the ISO by 1 stop and dropped the shutter to 125th/sec (maybe even a 60th) which would have left less noise in the final image. It was taken in 4:3 ratio and cropped to 2:3 for the final, taking out some redundant black area from the bottom and some slightly burnt-out area at the top near the menu, where a light was. White balance was left at auto which on this camera tends to leave some of the warmth in tungsten light, which I quite like. Corrected tungsten looks wrong to me in most occasions where it’s clearly visible as the light source.
f6.3 50th/sec 100mm
My shower doors at home are perfectly transparent and I noticed just how much that changes when they are in use. In this case I got my wife to smear some of the glass and let it steam up again which creates a very mixed effect and also makes it look a little ‘oil painting’ in nature.
Due to the way the our room is arranged I couldn’t quite get square to the shot so the glass does drop out of the focus plane towards the right, but this doesn’t cause to much of a problem. Despite being opaque there are some sharp areas inside the water droplets, as you would expect, with the detail only really visible at high zoom levels. I braced myself against the wall in an effort to stay steady which worked OK despite the 50th/sec shutter speed and the 100mm lens; by rights the 100th/sec rule should have been applied.
Soft/Hard
f6.3 400th/sec 100mm
With Spring just around the corner, many of the signs of it’s imminent arrival are starting to appear; one of those signs are catkins hanging from hazel trees. When seen hanging there catkins look wonderfully soft and furry, especially when they blow a little in the wind. I noticed how the sun was back lighting some in the garden an decided they would make an ideal subject for ‘soft’.
Initially I tried to capture them when the wind blew to introduce some movement to show how flexible they are, but with the bright light no movement was being captured and they just looked bent. I also tried shooting them lit from the side, but went back to the back-lighting. Using a macro lens I got close enough to see the structure of the catkins which is very petal-like but still very soft looking.
From a technical perspective I used the depth of field preview to get the focus plane just as I wanted by setting the appropriate aperture and I framed the shot so that catkins covered pretty much the whole frame, even if out of focus. With the bright light a low ISO was fine and still enable a 400th/sec shutter speed.
f8 1250th/sec 100mm
We are surrounded by ‘hard’ – we build our world out of it – so like many of the other pictures in this set I wanted to cover the topic but with a bit of a twist. I thought this stone piece was ideal, showing a woman’s body, but instead of the pampered softness often associated with femininity, it’s made out of stone. I wanted to get close enough to bring out the texture and being a cast piece the texture of the concrete substrate is now visible due to weathering, adding an extra element of hardness.
Being a bright day I set the aperture to f8 to get reasonable depth of field but leaving it shallow enough to lose the background; no chance of camera shake at over 1000th/sec.
In terms of post processing I had to twist it a little, and applied a small amount of un-sharp masking.
Contrast in a Single Shot – Sharp/Blunt
I had a few candidates for this category – the movement shot in the graveyard you can see above, which I chose to keep and use for that section. There was also some material at a market stall that worked for narrow/wide but I decided to go with blunt/sharp.
f8 125th/sec 100mm
I took a few different approaches to this one – sharp hands, blurred spire (left) and the opposite way around with the spire in sharp focus and I also tried to get both in focus, which didn’t really work with my 100mm. The hands on the statue were too high use a wider lens and get get closer (without ladders!) so I could take advantage of the extra depth of field I could have gained.
In terms of the subject there is a little contradiction in the that the sharp item, the spire, is blurred and the ‘blunt’ reaching arms are in sharp relief.
Sharp and Blunt are both relative terms and the representative earth being held up to the heavens in the hands of man is blunt by way of gesture – suggesting peace. Architecture is rarely described as sharp but I thought how the spire looked more like a spear, quite a contrast from the hands in itself.
The sky was dull so didn’t present too much back-light, but I clearly I did need to meter for the hands.
I should also point out that I know I’ve used my 100mm lens quite a bit during this assignment and it’s not because it’s my default/favourite lens – it just seemed right for the job in hand. Honest!