Friday, July 4

Street Portraits '08c

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Here's the third in this series of semi-candid street portraits. In some cases I ask permission, but after taking a few shots I go away, only to return later from a distance (the lens has an effective focal length of 450mm) and grab a few more. Sometimes the subjects are aware of the second series and sometimes not. Here's a case where the girl wasn't aware.

I'm convinced that a candid shot captures more personality... resonates more in my mind... than one in which the subject composes, then poses. Once again, there was a battle here with 1:30pm lighting. Increasingly I'm learning both how to win that battle and how to use it to dramatically pull out more of the my attitude about the subject.

5 comments:

April said...

I love the naturalness of her expressions.

A lovely girl; beautiful processing. I especially like whatever you did to tame the light.

Ted said...

Thanks April. Actually this is an exercise in controlling a noise storm. I used it as a fog to dissipate the worst of the contrasty clash while creating an artificial depth of field. I think it's a useful technique to enhance both the palette and the mood of an image. Pour enough noise over anything and you'll tame that sucker.....

Stacey Olson said...

Beautiful job Ted, I so agree about the candid shots. I really dislike when people pose, If you can capture them in a moment when they are busy and have no idea there is a camera about, you can usually really capture the true beauty of the person, well done.

Chad Oneil Myers said...

Very cool Ted.

LSqrd said...

Great series, Ted!