A S C R A P B O O K O F S O L U T I O N S F O R T H E P H O T O G R A P H E R
Enhancing the enjoyment of taking pictures with news that matters, features that entertain and images that delight. Published frequently.
19 June 2015
Last weekend we took the streetcar downtown and walked to North Beach for the annual street fair. Almost all the neighborhoods have a street fair each year, closing off the streets to traffic all weekend in favor of tents and pedestrians.
If we had to rank the attractions they would probably start with the food (which everyone loves), then the music (something for everyone), followed by the vendors (which provide, now and then, a surprise that puts a smile on your face).
But the big draw is really the people. If you enjoy people watching, a street fair will keep your eyeballs rolling. And if you brought a camera, as we did, you can enjoy the fun long after the last tent has come down.
We packed light, bring the Micro Four Thirds with its kit lens. And leaving it out as we wandered Columbus, Grant, Vallejo, Green shooting left and right. We used Aperture Priority to keep the aperture open, blurring the background. But with the zoom extended a lot, most of the shots were taken at f5.6.
We took 67 shots and missed twice as many. By the time you notice something, it's moved.
Such is street shooting. The big fish always get away.
Still we had a hard time culling this collection down to 21 images, which is about twice as many as we usually provide.
We worked a little differently today, too. With the big parade in Oakland to celebrate the Warriors' NBA championship, we relied on Lightroom mobile running on our iPhone 6 Plus to tag our keepers and do a little rotating and cropping.
That worked well. By the time we got back to our chair at the bunker, the images had synced and we took them through the Develop module, culling out the softly focused and poorly framed shots while adding Clarity and adjusting the Shadows to show a bit more detail. Quick work in Lightroom.
Looking at the final selection arrayed as thumbnails in Lightroom's Library module, we wondered if we shouldn't convert them all to black and white. But the color was so varied, so bright, so vibrant, we just couldn't.
It would have given a false impression of what was a very lively afternoon.