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Black and White Monochrome Photography Photography - Black & White Photography - Canon PowerShot S95 Stanford

Dramatic Architecture in Black and White

Packard - Stanford - 2011//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Over the holidays, I spent some time working through the post-processing techniques of Joel Tjintjelaar.

Joel’s a master of long exposure black and white images – along with dramatic architectural images. His techniques have evolved – from using lots of hard selections to now using a combination of a few hard selections along with luminosity masks to shape the light in his monochrome images.

This is an early example of my application of some of Joel’s teachings. It’s the David Packard Electrical Engineering Building at Stanford – captured with my tiny vest pocket Canon Powershot S95 almost five years ago.

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Architecture Black and White Fujifilm X100S Monochrome Photography Photography Photography - Black & White Photography - Fujifilm X100S San Francisco/California

One Front Street in San Francisco

One Front Street - San Francisco - 2014

One in a while I see an architectural shot that I find interesting – and it’s the combination of structure and light that makes it so.

Here’s an image from last year – shot with my Fujifilm X100S on San Francisco’s Market Street – and processed in Nik Software’s Silver Efex Pro 2.

A hat tip to Joel Tjintjelaar for sharing some of his techniques in working on these kinds of black and white images.

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Architecture Fujifilm X-T1 Monochrome Photography Paris Photography Photography - Black & White Photography - Fujifilm X-T1

Tour Saint-Jacques in Paris

Tour Saint-Jacques - Paris - 2014

I was looking back through my Paris 2014 photos last night and came across this image of Tour Saint-Jacques in Paris. Our small group spent about 30 minutes exploring the small park adjacent to the tower – capturing some wonderful people shots.

This 52-metre (171 ft) Flamboyant Gothic tower is all that remains of the former 16th-century Church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie (“Saint James of the butchery”), which was demolished in 1797, during the French Revolution, – like many other churches, leaving only the tower.

I was shooting with my Fujifilm X-T1 with the 18-135 mm zoom – and shot this at about 96 mm (roughly 144 mm in terms of full frame equivalent. I love the white background with just a touch of sky breaking through on the left to add some visual interest. Sort of along the lines of other “white seamless” backgrounds – which work well with this kind of extreme architectural photography.

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Black and White Monochrome Photography Photography Photography - Black & White Stanford

Solo

Solo - Stanford - 2013

This image from 2013 was shot at the Cool Cafe inside the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford. I love the symmetry of the square treatment, the glow on her hair and shoulders and the umbrellas outside.

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Black and White Cuba Monochrome Photography Photography Photography - Black & White Street Photography

The Importance of Letting Your Photos Marinate!

Take Out and Delivery - Havana - 2013

A couple of years ago, Eric Kim wrote one of his wonderful blog posts on the notion of letting your photos marinate “in order to really discover if they are any good or not.”

One of the things I most enjoy is looking back through my Lightroom catalog at images I’ve shot a year, or two, or more years ago. Sometimes I’ll just remember a situation – and go searching back through my catalog to try to remember. It’s always striking to me just how often I’ll something completely new in those images.

One of my first examples of this took place over a year from my first trip to Havana in January 2013. I was wondering whether I could assemble a book of portraits from my images shot in Havana – none of which were actually taken as portraits. I wanted to experiment with both black and white and a square format style – and it worked out beautifully. I found faces – portraits – in images I’d previously overlooked. Like seeing with new eyes all over again. See my Faces of Cuba images.

Last night I was back in a Havana mood again – this time looking forward to my next trip to Cuba in January 2016. I came across these two images – both of which just made me smile and remember the moments when they were taken. Marinate indeed – these two have been down deep in my Lightroom catalog for almost three years – and they resurfaced last night to my delight.

Break - Havana - 2013

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Black and White Cuba Monochrome Photography Photography Photography - Black & White

Short Film: Cuba Cubano Cañibano

Raúl Cañibano Ercilla - Havana - 2013

I’m looking forward to attending next week’s screening of the short film Cuba Cubano Cañibano – about the life and work of Cuban photographer Raúl Cañibano. The event is being held on Wednesday, September 23 in Palo Alto at The Mid Pen Media Center. RSVP if you’re planning to attend as space is limited.

My image above of Raúl shooting was taken in Havana in January 2013.

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Black and White Lightroom Lightroom CC Monochrome Photography Paris Photography Photography - Black & White Photography - Canon PowerShot S100 Photoshop CC Quotations Street Photography

Revisiting Paris in the Fall

Paris in the Fall

Last fall, I attended a wonderful street photography workshop in Paris led by Valérie Jardin. On one of our morning walks, there had been a bit of rain overnight which provided a lovely sheen to the streets. By mid-day, it was gone and the day turned sunny and bright. Turned out to be one of the gifts – a morning after the rain with the payment still wet and the skies beginning to clear.

Last night I revisited this image to post-process it again. I’ve recently subscribed to Lynda.com and yesterday watched one of the courses about Photoshop taught by Adobe’s Bryan O’Neil Hughes in which he revisited many old techniques and brought to light new and better ways to do things. As I watched his lessons, I was using this image as my test case. One of the points he stresses is using a non-destructive workflow in Photoshop – something I’ve not been doing but will certainly make much more use of in the future. With this image, I’ve got all of the layers saved in the TIFF file which is now in Lightroom. At some point in the future, I’ll come back to it – and continue a bit more post-processing doing some dodging and burning through luminosity masks.

I’m having fun revisiting Paris as I post-process this particular image. It was a quick “grab shot” at the time I took it – as I had fallen behind our group and was trying to catch up. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky – this was one of those times!

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Fujifilm X100T iPhone 6 Monochrome Photography Photography Photography - Black & White Photography - Fujifilm X100T San Francisco/California Street Photography

San Francisco Streets – Mid-August 2015

IMG_5300

Summer in San Francisco is always unpredictable weather-wise. Mark Twain’s famous quote is the the “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” It’s always about the fog – and whether it’s dominating the local weather – or whether an onshore high pressure area is keeping the fog at bay.

Today was one of those beautiful summer days in San Francisco – where the two were roughly in balance. There was fog offshore along the coast but it was clear over The City. These kinds of days make for a delightful time – not the coolish foggy overcast but also not an overly warm day either. In other words, just perfect.

I got a late start this morning heading up to meet my friend Doug Kaye – deciding to meet up at 101 California and then heading to one of our favorites for lunch: Tadich Grill. This classic San Francisco restaurant continues to delight – great food at great prices served with attitude. I had the Ahi Tuna Salad special – and it just doesn’t get any better.

After lunch, Doug and I headed up California Street for some street photography. Couldn’t be much better than today!

Triplets - San Francisco - 2015

Window Stripes - San Francisco - 2015

Chicago - San Francisco - 2015

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Black and White Fujifilm X-T1 Monochrome Photography Paris Photography Photography - Black & White Photography - Fujifilm X-T1

Two Views of the Paris Skyline

Deuce - Paris - 2014//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

I’ve been having fun going back through some of my images from a year or two ago – including the images I shot in Paris last October.

Here are two examples – of the Paris skyline shot from the Pompidou Center – and processed a bit differently to get to monochrome.

Thanks to Valérie Jardin for her beautiful Paris workshop!

October Light - Paris - 2014

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Black and White Lily Monochrome Photography Photography Photography - Black & White

Lily and Me

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This image was most likely shot in 2009 by my good friend – the late Chris Gulker.

We recently came across a roll of unprocessed film in one of Chris’ Leicas from that era – and my friend Doug Kaye had it processed.

Twice a week Lily and I would go for a 1.5 mile walk with Chris around his neighborhood – and then we’d come back to his place, have coffee and solve the world’s problems. Chris made this image during one of our problem solving sessions! Linda Hubbard Gulker put up with us as we did our thing.

We all miss Lily and Chris a lot. Those were very special times!