Saturday Afternoon at the Frolic Room | [Canon 5D Mark II]
April, 2015 | Hollywood, California
(click in the image for a larger version)
This was taken back in mid April when I was down in southern California to record some new online courses for lynda.com. It was a beautiful spring day and I made a stop in Hollywood for a short photo walkabout before driving up the coast to Carpinteria.
I'm not really known for my street photography, but it is a genre of photography that I enjoy a lot when the opportunity presents itself. These days, most of my street photography is done with my iPhone 6, but sometimes I also go out hunting for cool street images with my larger DSLR, which is what I used for this image. This scene was one of those perfect moments where everything came together perfectly.
Post processing in Photoshop was key to getting the scene the way I liked it, since the top of the sign was cut off in the main image of the man leaning against the wall. I was working fast to get him in that pose before he moved, but even if I had been more careful with the composition, the lens I was using would not have included all of the sign without cropping off his feet. Fortunately, I was shooting with a panorama-style merge in mind and after he moved back inside I tilted the camera up to get a shot that included the top part of the sign. You can see the two source images below.
Source images (click in the image to see a larger version)
Instead of using the Photomerge option in Photoshop, I opened the two files as layers using that command in Lightroom (Photo > Edit In > Open as Layers in Photoshop). I then used Auto-Align Layers and Auto-Blend Layers (both found in Photoshop's Edit menu) to create the initial merged result. Further adjustments were made using the Adaptive Wide Angle filter to straighten the lines in the image.
Panorama or multi-shot coverage techniques are not usually associated with street photography, but they can be used to good effect to include important location detail, as with this image, extend the angle of view of the lens, or simply create a new aspect ratio for an interesting scene.
Maine Workshop: 4 Spots Open
My next workshop will be in Rockport, Maine August 2 — 8, 2015. There are still 4 spots open, but sign up soon if you're interested in spending a full and creatively rich week on the coast of Maine indulging yourself in Creative Seeing: Refining Your Photographic Vision.