Brief 7 - Portraits - Adam

After unfortunately missing last weeks session I hope to see some of the top pictures from Roundhay posted on the Blog soon.

For this weeks Brief I chose a portrait shot I took in Manhattan last weekend.

This Photo is of a street performer next to Battery Park near South Ferry if you are familiar with the NYC Geography.

I spoke to the gentleman and he kindly posed for a number of shots. This one is my favourite shot.

Music Man

1/640s, f7.1, ISO400, 24mm

The photo below is a the same as the one above prior to the crop.

This shot provides more information about the individual as you can see his money case and that he is sitting on the concrete floor playing in the street.

I believe the crop above is a more emotional shot than this one but it depends on the person which they prefer.

As I was in New York I also added a few landscape shots to this week's brief

Soggy Times

1/85s, f2.8, ISO400, 24mm

I very warm and wet evening in Times Square.

I really enjoy looking at this photo over and over. The contrast between the grey wet streets with the colour in the square makes this almost a poster shot. The rushing tourists and locals with their umbrellas up going about their day adds to the energy with no one person's face recognisable to distract from the overall image.

Empire of the Sun

1/550s, f5.0, ISO100, 24mm

A chance happening on the Empire State Building whilst I was lazily wandering down 5th Ave.

This Photo gave me a sense of grandeur of this relatively old and famous sky scraper. Most images are taken with an arial view or from a neighbouring building but this was taken from ground view up! 

Having a wide angle lens is a must in New York City.

 Follow the Yellow Stripped Road

1/320s, f5.6, ISO100, 140mm

View from the top of the Empire States Building, looking down. 

As you can see I zoomed in quite far to add some detail of the street below. I chose this shot because of the long straight lines and the contrasting dark shadows of the buildings each side of this bright yellow avenue. A shot not to everyones tastes but a nice perspective photo.

Liberty at Large

1/320s, f6.4, ISO100, 69mm

A trip to NYC wouldn't be complete without including it's most famous french lady.

I chose this photo out of all the other shots because it gave the statue a sense of grandeur by including a ring of tourist around the base.

I know that when I first saw the Statue of Liberty in person many years ago I was underwhelmed by the size as it always was portrayed as much larger in the media and I know many other people have felt the same. This picture for me gave me back a bit more sense of enormity of the structure. Also using a polarised filter made a very nice Blue Sky backdrop.