Humans and Food Trucks

While wandering downtown San Francisco on Friday with Doug Kaye, we rounded a corner and came across three or four food trucks lined up front to back in this tiny alley – with not a lot of room on either side.

I captured this shot from the end of the line with my Fujifilm X-E2. When I first reviewed it, I marked as a reject. But tonight I came back across it and studied it a bit more. I noticed this guy on the right edge and the look in his eyes. In the original image, he was way to dark so a few strokes of Lightroom magic brought him back to life.

I then opted to do the black and white conversion using Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 – it does such a great job and provides such great control.

Finally, I added an oil paint layer in Photoshop CC. The oil paint helped smooth things out a bit in some places and added texture in others – particularly the highlights. A final touch of feathered platinum toning brought the image to this point – worth sharing.

My images are really never done. I enjoy the process of re-processing them, applying new techniques that I’ve recently learned and experimenting for new looks. This is an image I suspect I’ll be coming back to – it’s rich in composition and so human in sensibility.