On our last day in Havana, we visited a nearby family apartment in Central Havana – several families sharing space in what must have been a much wealthier family’s private home back before the revolution. The natural light through the windows was just beautiful that morning – helping to create some great portrait opportunities like this one.
She’s part of my Faces of Cuba portfolio. Post-processed using Lightroom 5, VSCO Film 04, and Photoshop CC.
This is Maria – the shopkeeper of Maria’s coffeehouse in Las Terazzas – about an hour outside of Havana.
We had a great day out of Havana touring this area – stopping first at Buena Vista, the French coffee plantation high in the hills – and then moving on to Maria’s for excellent coffee. I had the cappuccino which came with an image of Che in dark chocolate on top of the foam!
As we were leaving her café, I snapped this image of Maria – part of my Faces of Cuba portfolio.
Perhaps she’s actually “The Courier” – with that manila envelope in her hand. Or “The Spy”?
She was basking in the late afternoon sun in a late January Havana when I captured this shot. Another in my Faces of Cuba portfolio.
Here’s the next image in my Faces of Cuba portfolio.
On one of our evenings in Havana last January, a small group of us headed off to Cafe Taberna for dinner and a show. We had a table on stage left right up front – it was fun shooting the singers! This fellow was the lead – I caught him in between a couple of his routines watching the show.
Here’s another image in my Faces of Cuba portfolio – something I just started after working on last night’s image of The Fisherman!
The light pouring through those windows behind into this market in Havana was really amazing. It offered a high contrast opportunity for some great images of this butcher – and his colleagues.
I’ve been trying some new kinds of monochrome conversions – and here’s an example – a shot from the ferry in Havana last January. He was fishing out the side door of the ferry – and working to bait his hook. This edition has a bit of platinum toning in the midtones and shadows.
The Fisherman is the first image in my Faces of Cuba portfolio.
This afternoon a group of about a dozen owners of Ford Model A’s got together for their annual Ice Cream Social run to Los Altos. I stopped by and snapped a few shots – these were some really great Model A’s – and great guys and gals as well!
Yesterday, Doug Kaye and I met up for one of our regular photo walks – this time at the Berkeley Marina. To be honest (!), there’s not a lot of interesting photographic subjects at the marina. We found a few – as photographers always do – but we weren’t exactly captured by the opportunities for great shots.
As we were heading back to our cars, we walked up the hill in César Chávez Park where we found a group of kids enjoying what seemed like a summer day camp experience. I happened to notice a boy off to my right and took one quick shot. I captured the image – but didn’t “fill the frame” or study the subject – I just took one shot.
As I looked at this image in post-processing, I thought it really needed a very tight crop – along with a monochrome treatment. Thus, this result. I titled it “Explorer” – as he seems completely engaged in exploring that rock below him!
This has a bit of platinum toning – but only in the darker tones using a luminosity mask in Photoshop CC. Some High Pass sharpening helps to focus the eye on the subject – and the border keeps the eye inside the frame. I just love the late morning light on his back!
Doug Kaye and I met up for one of our irregular Friday photo walks today – this time in Berkeley. We did a bit of shooting down at the Berkeley Marina before heading to 4th Street and a great lunch at Zut!
Heading to lunch, we walked a couple of blocks and, along the way, came across this bronze sculpture – which, as it turns out, is named Pablo and is the creation of Mavis McClure.
I thought the light on Pablo was pretty special – and sat down to try to capture what interested me. Angular light across the face is almost always special and interesting – and Pablo’s oversized hands and the light on one of them just added more visual interest for me.
I opted to crop it to a square image, adding a black border, and processing it in Lightroom 5 as a monochrome image. As I look at this image, I’m sure Pablo’s thinking good thoughts!
It was great for me to get out shooting again with Doug today – brightened my mood and brought on good thoughts! Doug captured a shot of me composing this image.
One of the first photo workshops I took was with one of my favorite photographers – Chris Honeysett. For a while back in 2009-2010, he conducted a handful of workshops and I was lucky enough to be able to join one of them in San Francisco’s North Beach. I learned a lot watching Chris work with us – him shooting with his big view camera and us firing away with our handheld digital SLRs! I’ll never forget his admonition – “SLOW DOWN!” – take you time and get into the scene before you starting hitting that shutter button!
This is one of the last images from the second day of the workshop with Chris – a day that began very early before sunrise on the streets of San Francisco across from the Transamerica Pyramid. It was one of those August summer mornings – with thick fog hanging over the upper floors of the pyramid’s tower. Afterwards, we had a great time at Embarcadero Center – an amazing place for architectural photography – and then wrapped up the day by heading to Red’s.
This image was a quick grab shot I took from Red’s looking across at one of the old piers and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. I’ve used a bit of Topaz Simplify to smooth the water and remove some of its details – and sharpened the image with Dan Margulis’ Sharpen 2013 action. I enjoy all of the detail in this image – a clean shot with no vignette but many small details to capture my eye.