Where The Bright Lights and The Big City Meet
Zumm Zumm - 5.1mm at f/2, ISO 200, Shutter speed 1/60 sec
Ever since returning from a brief trip to New York in the spring of 2000, I've always likened London to a massive, sprawled out village rather than a big city. I still think of it this way today. I'm not sure these photographs do a good job of capturing this village feel, but I suppose I could do a lot worse, such as venturing into The City. Regardless, these shots were captured the weekend before last in Soho and Piccadilly Circus around 6pm.
Visually, in the Western world at least, we are trained, through reading, to look at a scene from left to right. In the photograph above, the direction in which the cyclist on the left is looking further persuades us to move our eyes to the right, where we discover yet another rickshaw and a cyclist who is looking directly at us. A person looking directly at the camera, is the strongest attachment that can form between viewer and subject. I'm not sure attachment is the right word, but I'm sure you get the gist.
This photograph of the rickshaws was shot from the hip. No looking at the electronic viewfinder, no composing, just feel it and shoot. What a rush.
The Big Swing - 21.8mm at f/2, ISO 80, Shutter speed 1/400sec
The first 2 photographs have been processed with Ilford film in Silver Efex Pro and the bottom photograph was processed with Kodak Tri-X film. I've applied a copper tone to all 3 photographs, a toner I don't use very often, but quite like the way these turned out using Preset 10. Check out the Silver Efex Pro preset at the end of this post. I like the tonal gradation in the seat in this photograph below. It makes the image, if you ask me. Maybe it's the fact that I shot them all with a Leica D-Lux 4.
Drive By - 12.1mm at f/2, ISO 200, Shutter speed 1/400 sec
