prodigalgodson wrote: ↑January 25th, 2022, 2:38 am
Obviously a beautiful time of day here, but I also love the framing, with the various symmetries -- the trees themselves, the woman split between the two trees, the boy split between the one and the edge of the frame, the streetlight and cone tightly flanking the central tree, the waterline dividing the frame horizontally, and the obscured sun and its reflection bisected by the trunk dividing it vertically...very Naruse. The color tone would usually be a little warm for me, but it works nicely here. Do you control the white balance on your camera? This is actually the kind of shot I love to see in films, somehow the time element adds to the meditative, immersive effect of a gorgeous late afternoon.
Do you do still photography? I've seen your movies in this forum, so I know you know your way around a camera, but is that just for moving images or still as well? I just shoot with an iPhone, which doesn't give me control over white balance. You're right that I did bump the color tone a little in editing. Below you can see the edited version on the right and uncorrected version on the left. Is it too much? I often can't resist augmenting that late afternoon glow. I've just dipped my toes into editing in the past couple of months, and I'm still using some very, very basic tools. I suppose I'll eventually look into editing apps (Camera 2 and Lightroom have been recommended to me).
prodigalgodson wrote: ↑January 25th, 2022, 2:38 am
My favorite photo so far right here! From the technical side, the stark contrast of tones is perfectly balanced, the textures are exquisite -- peep those dual meshes of tree and fence, and the fur popping out against the matrix of metal, plastic, concrete, and gravel. But aside from that, it's just so evocative -- this big Beamer just out of reach behind a barbed-wire fence where the plebeians can't park, with the ambiguous figures of the huskies doubling as guards and prisoners. To me the virtue of photography is in crystalizing these kind of abstractly meaningful moments. Kind of reminds me of stuff from Robert Frank's Americans.
A comparison to Naruse first and now Robert Frank! I'm genuinely blushing. There's a lot of serendipity in both the dog picture and the Riverside Park picture. Mostly, I just walk around and raise my camera at what catches my eye. My goals are always twofold: to walk and to take pictures, and as such I don't linger or work to set up shots. I trust instead that a high volume of pictures will yield a few keepers. I can tell you that for my walk in Riverside Park, I took about 40 pictures (it was an unusually brief walk for me), about half of which I deleted immediately, and only two of which I really liked. Here's an example of one I kept but didn't think was good enough for my "Photography Favorites" folder:
Certainly, in the Riverside Park picture, I didn't see all of those symmetries. I remember exactly what happened that led to that shot. I was looking at the young man on the park bench because he had his phone to his ear. I'm very intrigued by images of people in the busy city on their phones. There's some sociological frisson in the sense of being both alone and connected through a device, even as one is surrounded by a crowded cityscape. I certainly recognize that feeling in my own experience walking around and taking pictures. But then the woman and her baby wandered into view, and my main focus just became taking a picture of her while framing the sun between the trees. Everything else in the picture is a lucky accident really.
The same happened with the dogs. Almost no thought process there at all. I was walking along, suddenly realized that something on my right was moving, saw the dogs, and took a picture within five seconds. What really appealed to me was how the dogs were posed, like statues, but looking directly at me. Dogs have the wonderful characteristic of never having been told that it's rude to stare. They would make great street photographers. But everything else about that pictures just happened. It was only later that I recognized that the fence and the car had some iconographic meaning. Unfortunately, the sky is overexposed. That part of the pictures is totally washed out, but happily it's only a small chunk of the overall frame. And I kind of like how the reflection of the sky in the car window splits the car in two.
prodigalgodson wrote: ↑January 25th, 2022, 2:38 am
The Fort Greene Park one is up there for me too, gotta love those kind of spaces and I think you hit the nail on the head in capturing it.
Which one is that? The one with the snowmen or the one in the playground? I assume you meant the playground, and yes those spaces are great to photograph, especially at night. I'm still figuring out how to shoot at night with my new iPhone 12 Pro. I was more comfortable with shooting at night with my old iPhone SE, which is another way of saying that it didn't give me many options. The iPhone 12 Pro, with its three lenses, gives me more options in terms of exposure. I'm still figuring out how best to use it, and I think you can see in the playground pictures that the trees are a bit overexposed. The iPhone SE made night pictures so atmospheric, and that's actually initially what made me decide to pursue this as a hobby.
