Tag Archive for: black&white

Reflection

Reflection. Cluj-Napoca, Romania, 2016.

Reflection. Cluj-Napoca, Romania, 2016. Get a print.

Autumn has now come over Cluj-Napoca. The sky is grey, the temperature is dropping, everyone’s mood (mine included) is less than stellar. It’s time for challenging myself with a new approach in street photography: getting more abstract. I must admit that the way I’ve photographed the streets until now has been relatively orthodox in a composition point of view: classic rule of thirds, natural frames, etc. Of course, using lower shutter speed or lines has helped spicing things a bit. The dutch angle, too.

A good way to change the composition style is to search for reflections. It forces you to find a different angle, to frame in an original way. You often have to break the rules. Of courses, the rules of composition must be known before being broken… but that’s were the fun lies, am I right?

I found a car with black tinted windows and windshield in a small street of Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Tinted windows usually enhance the mirror effect of the reflection, here nothing from the interior of the car is visible, while with standard windows the interior may be partially visible. It’s a matter of preferences. For this photo, it was a perfect setup, as I wanted to get the very contrasty facade of the restaurant in front of me. Then, I just waited for someone to pass by. It took a few tries to obtain the framing I wanted, beheading the passer-by and have the reflection of his head and bust in the car’s windshield, but in the end, it worked, pretty well!

Do you like this photo? Click here and get an original, signed print in limited edition!

EXIFs:

  • Camera:Fujifilm X100T
  • Aperture: ƒ/5.6
  • Focale: 23mm
  • Shutter speed: 1/125s
  • ISO: 400
  • Copyright: Pierre Pichot 2016, all rights reserved
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Family portrait

Family portrait. Bucharest, Romania, 2016.

Family portrait. Bucharest, Romania, 2016. Get a print.

It’s not always easy for street photographers to find a good background for their subjects… or a good subject for their backgrounds! But sometimes, everything is just as it’s meant to be.

Ads are often seen as visual pollution, an argument that is very understandable, and that I may say myself. But used in a right way, with an artistic purpose, it may gain some sense beyond the “they make me want to buy items I don’t want” thing. It’s the case o this photo: the ad gives this grandpa a virtual family, a few grandkids to look after while he sips his coffee. Of course, that’s just for a moment, just in my mind, but maybe that’s a vision he has, or he had, who knows… A whole new story 🙂

I really enjoy these kinds of sweet juxtapositions. You can take two opposed entities – an ad campaign for a worldwide clothing brand and an old man with his bike and his dog – and mix them to give a new idea, a new purpose.

Do you like this photo? Click here and get an original, signed print in limited edition!

EXIFs:

  • Camera:Fujifilm X100T
  • Aperture: ƒ/5.6
  • Focale: 23mm
  • Shutter speed: 1/125s
  • ISO: 100
  • Copyright: Pierre Pichot 2016, all rights reserved
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Surprise!

Surprise! Cluj-Napoca, Romania, 2016.

Surprise! Cluj-Napoca, Romania, 2016. Get a print.

The only perk of having the days shorter and shorter while winter is coming (yeah, mandatory reference here…), is that shops get illuminated much sooner, while they’re still open. This way, we get rid of the over-reflection in the outside, but also the lightning becomes more and more interesting, from the inside.

I think I’ve scared this poor woman to death on that day. The surprise on her face is quite self-explaining! I was having a hard time to frame her correctly in the natural border offered by the model’s arm as she was eating and moving. It took longer that I wished, and because of that she noticed me, stop moving, and looked at me with this “what the f*** is he doing” look that is absolutely awesome. The framing and the timing were just perfect, the shot was done, I smiled, she got back to her sandwich. It may not be the best photograph I’ve ever taken technically speaking, but it’s once again the proof that the content and the correct composition make everything. Beside her expression, I just love how the model seems to have its head in its hand!

I’ve seen her again a few days later. The shop she works in is close to where I work. She definitely recognised me, but unfortunately I didn’t have the photo with me at that time. For sure, the next time we meet, I’ll show her this photo, and maybe give her a small print. It’s a photo that has been having a lot of success on several groups and forums (over 2000 likes on Facebook!), it’s the least I can do, right? It may be a good… surprise, for her 🙂

Edit: Surprise! has won 2nd place at the 2017 National Awards of the Sony World Photography Awards!

Get a print!

Do you like this photo? Click here and get an original, signed print in limited edition!

More about this photo

For me, it’s important to share as much info as possible about the photos I take. Therefore, here are the EXIFs for this photo:

  • Camera:Fujifilm X100T
  • Aperture: ƒ/2.8
  • Focale: 23mm
  • Shutter speed: 1/125s
  • ISO: 1250
  • Copyright: Pierre Pichot 2016, all rights reserved
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Electric stairs

Electric stairs. Bucharest, Romania, 2016.

Electric stairs. Bucharest, Romania, 2016. Get an original, limited edition signed print.

Continuing my very own “Bucharest Festival of Lines 2016”, in a similar environment. This time I’ve installed myself at the bottom of an underground metro station entrance, and waited for my subject. It was already late in the afternoon, the sun had already started to set for a few tens of minutes. This way, I could capture the difference of light between the dark inside and the shinier outside, but without a too large difference in light quantity. Unlike in a previous photo of mine, Stairway to…, I didn’t want to have a high contrast between the inside and the outside, so I needed to wait for the right time to get the right amount of light. As I’ve already said, preparing and owning the scene are very important!

Next to that, I had 3 goals for this photo. First of all, I wanted to get lines. Recurrent readers know that I love lines 🙂 Look at all those diagonals! It’s a heaven for me, it makes the photo so graphical and so dynamic in the same time. Second, it’s a scene with a lot of textures. There is this stone wall, the battled metal of the electric stairs, the steps, all of them have their own texture that I wanted to be very visible. That is why lightning was important for me, avoiding to have a too strong contrast. Lastly, I wanted to anonymise my subject. People are often only an element of the urban landscape, and she definitively is only an accessory to the real subject here, the stairs. All of that gives a punchy photo that I really like. And I hope you like it too, don’t hesitate to give me your feeling in the comments below!

Do you like this photo? Click here and get an original, signed print in limited edition!

EXIFs:

  • Camera:Fujifilm X100T
  • Aperture: ƒ/5.6
  • Focale: 23mm
  • Shutter speed: 1/250s
  • ISO: 800
  • Copyright: Pierre Pichot 2016, all rights reserved
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Stairway to…

Stairway to... Bucharest, Romania, 2016.

Stairway to… Bucharest, Romania, 2016.

My regular readers have now understood that I’m a very big fan of lines and graphical elements in my photos. It’s even something I really try to include in my photography, as my eyes are so attracted by geometrical shapes. During a recent trip to Bucharest I’ve found one of my new heavens… in a shape of a stairway.

It’s funny how in urban and street photography some great things happen when you don’t expect it. I don’t refer to the others’ behaviour, which is unexpected anyhow. I’m thinking about this kind of 6th sense that photographers tend to develop, like sniffing in the air that something is happening, that some place may be an interesting spot. It’s what happened when I was looking to buy a bottle of water close to Piata Unirii (Union Square). From all the shops around me, I’ve instinctively chosen the only one which was underground, with the entrance on one side, and the exit on the other side. And when reaching the exit… voilà.

I’ve found this metal stairway with walls made of undulated metal, such a great amount of lines! The sun was shining just in front of the exit, making the old man just a silhouette and the undulated metal shine in such an incredible way. I’ve just waited for the woman to reach the top of the stairs, and the photo was done. I wished I’ve shot more at this very spot, but the security guard was not in a good mood and asked me to leave. No problem, I know the place now, I’ll be back!

Do you like this photo? Click here and get an original, signed print in limited edition!

EXIFs:

  • Camera:Fujifilm X100T
  • Aperture: ƒ/5.6
  • Focale: 23mm
  • Shutter speed: 1/125s
  • ISO: 400
  • Copyright: Pierre Pichot 2016, all rights reserved

 

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