Jay Maisel Workshop #2

Before delving into today’s photograph, I need to provide you with the ground rules of Jay’s workshop.  The basic rule is:  what you shoot is what you present.  There is no Lightroom or Photoshop work that is allowed on anything that you print.  No cropping, no setting white and black points, no sharpening.  NOTHING can be done to your images other than downloading them and resizing (maximum length and/or width) them for proper presentation.  You shoot and present your images as JPEGs.

I try to know how my camera works, but since I never shoot in JPEG, I knew very little about how the various JPEG setting worked within my Nikon D3.  As a result of this, I was forced to quickly learn about the various sharpening, color saturation and contrast setting available within my camera.  I must admit, it took me a couple of tries before I got the camera setting the way that I wanted them.  The final setting that I settled on were:  sharpening at 7, contrast +1, brightness at 0, color saturation at +1, and hue at 0.  With these settings I felt that my images had just enough pop to catch the viewer’s eye, but not that “over the top” look that you often get when the sharpness and color saturation are pushed to the limit.

In the spirit of the workshop, all photos presented as Jay Maisel Workshop photos are JPEG images without any adjusting or retouching in Lightrooom or Photoshop. 

Both of the photos that I am presenting today were taken in New York City's Chinatown.  I had asked permission to photograph both of the subjects before I took the photos but I waited a little time to allow them to go back to their “normal” activity before taking the shots.  I wanted the images to be about normal life in the big city.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6 at 200mm, ISO 2,200, f/8 and with a shutter speed of 1/500^th of a second.

Post Processing:  NONE!