Portland and a little street photography

I like some kinds of street photography. Though I cannot put what I like into words, I know what I don't like: badly framed, blurred photos of people passing by with their backs to the camera, or “candid” shots of people doing mundane things or looking undignified in some way. I am also not fond of candid photos of people living on the street. They are not there for our entertainment.

Last weekened was time to visit my child, who attends college in Oregon. We met in Portland and spent the weekened there. Though it was not a photography-oriented weekened, I did take my camera and took a few opportunities to use it in town.

I needed to travel light and I knew that Portland is often overcast, so I took my 35 mm prime and only that lens. Though some might argue that it is not the best phocal length for street photography, I like it just fine, particularly because it is the only prime lens that I own. Since I did not take a tripod, I knew I could operate with a shutter speed of 1/60 just fine, and that I would go home with sharp images.

I really liked the shoe store sign below. This was one of the instances when I missed having a zoom lens, since I wanted to zoom in the shoe store sign and have the rest of the busy stuff out of the frame. Trying to compensate for the wide angle view and great sharpness across the frame, in addition to busy stuff I did not want, I did a little post-processing, as follows. Below is the original photo, processed from raw, orginal size. It is 14,155 pixels.

NIKON D3100

35 mm f/1.8, ISO 100, f/7.1, 1/200

First, I cropped the photo to get rid of most of the sky, and the wire, which were not really doing anything. I also sharpened it with Topaz. Second, I used Photoshop Element's filter “old fashion photo” - “newspaper” to render it black and white with high contrast. This took care of some of the distracting elements in the background and made the shoe pop up. This image is 7858 pixels, still large enough to print.

I love neon signs and have started a collection of those. On the way out of a pizza place, I took the chance to grab this photo. I let the camera handle it for me (I put it in automatic). The photo below is enhanced with Topaz HDR II filter:

NIKON D3100

35 mm f/1.8, ISO 400, f/4, 1/60

The photo below is a parking garage at the PSU campus. I was photographing the wall painting when a person happened to pass by, browsing a phone. I like the contrast between the book covers painted on the wall and the phone, which now symbolizes most of the reading a young person is willing to do. Note that I was using a relatively wide aperture, 3.5, but since I was photographing a painting, it would not have mattered. Note that the subject ended up a little blurred not only because he was walking and my shutter speed was not fast enough to freeze movement, but also because there was probably not enough depth of field to render the person, and the wall, sharp. But I still like it...

NIKON D3100

35 mm f/1.8, ISO 100, f/3.5, 1/80

Besides the city, we also went to the Washington Park, where we visited the Rose Test Garden and the Holocaust memorial. The lens was definitely not appropriate for flowers, but I did take a few pictures I like. The one below I am particularly fond of, it is me smelling a rose. My son had to take it since I had not carried a tripod. The original is a little over saturated and that was particularly visible on the roses. Having to desaturate the photo has given it a somewhat unreal climate, which I like. I also applied some vignette using Elements 9 to get rid of some of the background, which was not blurred because my focal length was short.

NIKON D3100

35 mm f/1.8, ISO 400, f/5, 1/100

And lastly, a sculpture in the Holocaust Memorial, taken with a very wide aperture for shallow depth of field... It was further slightly softened using a Topaz filter.

NIKON D3100

35 mm f/1.8, ISO 100, f/2, 1/160