Jay Maisel Workshop #8

Jay did not critic this photo.

I saw this guy giving directions to two girls but could not get the shot because the girls were in my way.  After he finished, I told him that I thought his bag was really cool.  He immediately told me that it was not his but was his niche’s bag and he was taking it over to her house. 

I asked if I could take a photo of him pointing like he did when he gave the girls directions.  He was a little reluctant, but then he agreed.  After a few minutes, he really got into the scene.  I had a couple shots that I liked but it seemed that something was missing.  I saw the guy on the bike coming up the street and so I suggested that we take another shot with the bike in the background.  I think the bike helps sell the shot as street photography and helps add depth to the overall photo.

I know that some people might be concerned by the pole behind him looking like it was growing out of his head.  It does not bother me because of its size and because this is a street photo, not a portrait.  The thing that I do not like is the red sign and alarm on the pole.  To me, red is a very hard color to control in your images and I think that they take the viewer's eye away from the main subject—the bright pink bag.

One thing that I forgot to mention earlier is that I h ave presented a few photos that were in 4x5 format rather than 2x3 format.  The Nikon D3 has an option to change the format from 2x3 to 4x5.  So, this was done in camera with Jay’s permission.

Jay and I got into a big discussion as to why I wanted to do this.  I told him it was simple:  I had less real estate (i.e., distracting background) to worry about in a 4x5 format and I thought that the 4x5 format was better suited to photographing people.  Jay listened, but I do not think I made a sale. 

Jay said that he thought that all photographers look at things from a specific perspective—a wide or telephoto perspective.  He told me that he had a telephoto-perspective which meant that he zeroed-in on slices of a scene thus eliminating a lot of distracting elements.  He told me that he never thought about how people might look at scene from different aspect ratios.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6 at 62mm, ISO 400, f/8 and 1/180^th of a second.

Post Processing:  NONE!