Band-Aids or exercise. Choose your path wisely.
Give Me Light
It makes everything better.
Too Much Sky
Trying to avoid taking pictures with too much sky in them. No easy feat since I’m on the beach a lot.
Raw or JPEG?
I love the idea of JPEG, but I’m going back to raw for now. Shooting raw and processing black and white photos in Silver Efex Pro is King. Takes more time, but all I got is time. Not sure what’s going on with the Ricoh processor but I’ve noticed some really blotchy results when shooting higher ISOs. I like grainy photos, but it doesn’t look like grain. I can take a raw photo shot at the same ISO and it looks nice to me. I much prefer the digital grain over whatever the processor is creating. I also think processing the raw makes a more appealing black and white image. So raw for now.
I could always shoot at lower ISOs, but I love the flexibility of shooting at higher ISOs to make the GR point and shoot with no worries of depth of field. I just want to look and shoot.
Here’s a photo shot at ISO 6400 and processed in Silver Efex Pro. It has some added Tri-X simulated grain.
Choose Your Path
Do you want your photos to look good in an art gallery or make you feel angry, sad or happy? Ideally both, but life doesn’t usually look at that great showcased on a wall.
Thoughtful Composition
I think the type of street photography that has very deliberate compositions are quite boring to look at. I know the photographer hung out at the scene for an indefinite amount of time waiting for the moment to strike. I appreciate the dedication, but the result is lost on me. Life is chaotic. I want to see it play out. Bonus if a nice composition comes from it, but for me, moment is king.
Bruising The Scene
I’ve been trying lately to move about undetected. Going for no eye contact, scenes in the original state. But sometimes it’s impossible to attain. I’d rather have a bruised scene than no scene at all. Sometimes the eye contact adds something to it.
Pacific Palisades 4th of July Parade
A tight knit community. You can tell the people here are setting their kids up for success. People there are very nice and polite. Very well off as well. Reminds me of the affluent communities in suburban Cincinnati. Such a positive energy. People in this neighborhood love America. I don’t blame them. Look at their houses, their families and their lives. They are the American dream.
Tweaking JPEG Settings
I tweaked my High Contrast JPEG settings today. The HC is too strong, so trying out Hard BW instead. A lot of my photos were turning out underexposed. Even adjusting my exposure compensation, they were too dark. Just looking at the few photos I took today with the new settings, they look very similar to film.
An example.
LA Street Photography
I think it’s way underrated for street photography. In LA there’s such a wide variety of places to shoot that all look different. Easier to make a nice image that looks very different from one another. And there’s no reason not to come away with decent photos on a daily basis. You could bike down The Strand and make very different images from Santa Monica to Redondo. All have unique character and demographics of people. And that’s just on the beach, a small slice of LA.
Chris Athanasiadis 