A few weeks ago I was attending a university graduation ceremony of one of the members of my family. I wasn’t really in a artistic mode to be honest, much more in another direction like “take portraits with the telephoto as you came late and can’t get closer than 20 meters from the scene” mode. Not my favourite kind of photography, but being the only one in the family with correct photography skills, I was the one that got declared volunteer for this task. I think that it will ring a bell for all the photographers reading this blog post.
Once my relative got his diploma, it got really boring as there were still a LOT of kids that were to receive their precious paper. It gave me time to wander a bit and I found this grey haired man, in this theatre-like place. It was a pretty interesting figure: he was the only one with light coloured hairs, and he was reflecting the lights from the scene like none of the other people in the place. The time for me to move the camera to him, he looked at the other side (the scene is a bit more on the right hand side), and in this other direction he showed me a part of his face. Click, the shutter is released, at least I have my shot of the day 🙂
The processing was fairly straightforward using Adobe Lightroom to turn the photo in black and white and give a lower key feeling. Then, some tiny touches of dodge & burn to raise the overall contrast.
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EXIFs:
- Camera: Canon 6D
- Lens: Canon EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM
- Aperture: ƒ/2.8
- Focale: 150mm
- Shutter speed: 1/160s
- ISO: 1600
- Copyright: Pierre Pichot 2016, all rights reserved
Just a little note, a little time for bragging 🙂 I’ve just been featured on PhotoTeam Romania for my photo Strangers in the Dark VII, one of my favourite photo! Non Romanian speakers, prepare your Google Translate.
My photo was selected by Mirela Momanu, with whom I’ve finally met in Cluj during the Photo Romania Festival 2016 after almost 2 years of virtual friendship over Facebook and different photography groups. It was a pleasure to meet her and others members of the PhotoTeam and OnSpot groups, finally, face to face.
I called this photo “Dutch angle” as a reference to the famous camera tilt technique of “[setting the camera] at an angle on its roll axis so that the shot is composed with vertical lines at an angle to the side of the frame, or so that the horizon line of the shot is not parallel with the bottom of the camera frame”. This is typically the kind of composition I enjoy. I love to play with lines and stripes and tilting the camera in a way that the cross walk stripes are now going diagonal make this photo so dynamic! This combination of now diagonal lines, in two directions, makes a perfect graphical background for street photography.
I shot this dutch angle photo during a street photography workshop part of the Photo Romania Festival 2016 in Cluj-Napoca. It’s was the very first shot of the day, taken just before another picture that I’ve already blogged about. We were in a zone were road works has just been finished and those freshly painted stripes were just… tempting me, inviting me to do something graphical with them. How to refuse this invite? I’m happy this girl with her flowery coat just stepped in the frame, waiting for the green light to pop in. She was a perfect subject for this photo. The only challenge were the cars passing just in front of us, finding the exact timing was not easy but in the end, we did it!
The processing was fairly straightforward using Adobe Lightroom to turn the photo in black and white with Fujifilm‘s camera profiles. I just needed to raise the contrast between the asphalt and the white painted stripes, and voila!
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EXIFs:
- Camera:Fujifilm X100T
- Aperture: ƒ/5.6
- Focale: 23mm
- Shutter speed: 1/500s
- ISO: 320
- Copyright: Pierre Pichot 2016, all rights reserved