Tag Archive for: cluj-napoca

Oser flea market. Cluj-Napoca, Romania, 2016.

Cluj-Napoca, Romania, 2016.

A new photo essay from yours truly, about the Oser Flea Market, an anachronism in Cluj-Napoca:

In Cluj-Napoca, Romania, Saturday morning means flea market. Be it summer or winter, hot or cold, sun or snow, thousands of people roam every Saturday morning to the Oser flea market. During the communist era, Oser was the place to buy imported goods from Turkey or the former Yougoslavia. Blue jeans, snickers, perfumes could be found there, as well as other black market goods from here and there. It became the flea market in the form we know today a few years after the collapse of the communist regime.

Check out the rest of the photo essay with 14 new photos and more info about the flea market.

This post is also the occasion to introduce photo essays in my portfolio. I want to go a step further in the photo reporter and storyteller domain by getting deeper into a subject. It is sometimes just not possible with only a few shots. I hope you’ll like it! Don’t hesitate to leave a feedback about this new way to present my work. It is always appreciated 🙂

Dutch angle. Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

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!

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: 1/500s
  • ISO: 320
  • Copyright: Pierre Pichot 2016, all rights reserved

Public transportation. Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

While I’m not a fan of winter (damn slippy snow!), I like how the people’s attitude changes. More melancholy. It reflects quite well when you look at the people in public transportation – buses, metro, tramways – that have that look in their eyes. Not necessarily sad, more like if they were looking at something that doesn’t exist… This photo was taken during a cold evening in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

I did the shot with a Fujifilm X100T, processed with Adobe Lightroom. Here again the fantastic Monochrome profile from Fujifilm and the relatively low noise in high ISO made my day. I just did a bit of dodge & burn to raise the contrast, and that’s it!

EXIFs:

  • Camera: Fujifilm X100T
  • Aperture: ƒ/2.8
  • Focale: 23mm
  • Shutter speed: 1/60s
  • ISO: 5000
  • Copyright: Pierre Pichot 2015, all rights reserved