How I See You
“Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes.” – Henri Cartier-Bresson
LA County Fair in B&W
So on Monday LA had the hottest day EVER since they started recording the temp back in, like, 1887 (113 degrees!). It came after a miserable run of sweltering days and the day before, on Sunday, we decided to goto the LA County Fair. Fortunately, we arrived late enough to (sorta) beat the heat. And I figured, since I brought my 7D along and my blog is lacking in the category, I’d take some B&W shots.
I’m conflicted with B&W. The process, that is. When I shoot, I try to convey feeling through my images. And this involves not only extending myself through my camera, but also incorporating the feeling of the flow around me. So I tend to look briefly at the Live View preview to ‘digest’ this feeling and adjust accordingly. Shooting B&W is challenging since, based on advice from much more experienced photogs than myself, I’m shooting in color and post-processing into B&W instead of using the camera’s monochrome setting. It makes perfect sense why doing the former is the better way to go (better image quality, option of having the image in color, etc.), but it’s conflicting. Instead, I have to imagine what the scene will look like in B&W and decide whether it will reflect the feeling I’m experiencing at the moment of taking the shot.
My conflicting feelings aside, I love B&W and I do enjoy the post-processing workflow. It really allows me to reflect on shots and engage with my images. It makes photography a more total experience for me. Generally, I try to keep the post-processing to a minimum (I recently acquired some sweet Photoshop actions that I’m excited to try out, though). In the images below, the post-processing consists of desaturation, modest increase in contrast, and some lens vignetting (all done in RAW). I also added the exif data for each if anyone’s interested (just click the italic ‘i’ in the corner of the photo).
As you’ll notice, the animal farm stood out to me. Animals crammed into small pens, each anonymously tagged through the ear, existing only to be fed for our entertainment. I also tried to focus on shooting people. Honestly, photographing people still makes me a little uncomfortable. The feeling of invading their space is something I eventually need to get over because, in my opinion, photos of people are always the most interesting.
Inspiring Documentary On Street Photography
Saw this via Eric Kim on Twitter and thought I’d share. Street photography is definitely something I wish I did more of. This docu pretty much sums up why. I’ve posted the first installment below. Enjoy.
Seems the creator has disabled embedding. You can watch it here.
