As I have mentioned a few times before, I love walking along downtown streets, taking pictures as I go. I might take 200-300 shots in an hour or so. Then I sit in a comfy chair and look through my shots to see what goodies I caught. My favorite subject matter is store windows -- day or night -- because you can see the inside and outside world at the same time.
I was just in Manhattan for a business trip and had several opportunities to snap photos as we walked to dinners and around the hotel on the last morning in town.
Below are some examples of how there can be hidden gems in your pictures. "Zoom in and crop" is how you can take a picture from ho-hum to hmmm!
Each set of pictures shows the original and then the cropped version I made. In some cases I also used Photoshop to boost the color or add a filter.
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| A random street turns into... |
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| ...a story about people and cars in close spaces |
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| A nice pink jacket, but nothing to see here, right?... |
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...look at the almost abstract hiding in the lower left corner.
I used a filter but can't remember which one -- maybe Paint Daubs.
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I liked the strong sunlight framing the couple who had been walking in front of me so I snapped a series
and liked the pose below that turned up in one of the shots.
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| Waiting for the right people to walk into the scene can make a difference. |
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| I snapped a series of about six images as we crossed the street and ... |
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| ...found this comparison of two relationships in one of them! |
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| The solid color clothing doesn't distract from outside scene reflections so you can often get nice details. |
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| I cropped the top half of the photo. I boosted the saturation and used the Poster Edges filter in Photoshop. |
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| another view. I used the Cutout filter in Photoshop on this one. |
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Occasionally I find my way into a photo...
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