Another monochrome image treatment from last Saturday’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade in San Francisco. This image was shot with my Nikon D600 at the corner of Second St. and Market – where the head of the parade assembles. Lots of San Francisco Police were preparing for the parade’s start – and catching up among themselves!
I used Photoshop to convert this image to black and white – and used some highlight and toning layers to add a bit of depth.
This image of Filoli’s beautiful garden walk was taken on March 2 – a few weeks before Spring officially arrived.
One the best units in San Francisco’s St. Patrick’s Day parade was the Irish Pipers Band. I captured this shot with my Nikon D600.
Here’s an image I shot at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on Saturday morning as I was heading to the annual San Francisco St. Patrick’s Day parade. The whole Yerba Buena Center complex is a photographers delight – chock full of interesting people, some amazing textures, waterfalls, trees and lawn – you name it, it’s all here in a bit less than a city block!
For the last several years, my primary camera has been a Canon 5D Mark II DSLR. It’s a wonderful camera and has done an amazing job for me. I’ve got a collection of Canon prime and zoom lenses for that camera that work beautifully and have helped me capture some beautiful images. I have lots of wonderful memories of trips to venues around the west with my Canon! (Check out my Cool Tools page for details on my favorite gear!)
In January, Doug Kaye and I headed to Havana, Cuba to participate in a person-to-person cultural exchange program organized by the great folks at Santa Fe Photographic Workshops. Along with our workshop colleagues, we had an amazing week in Havana – and I had a blast getting into the world of street photography which was pretty much a new experience for me.
A few months before the Cuba trip, I bought a new Nikon D600 – shortly after this new camera body was introduced. In particular, I was interested because of the early reviews and reports about the D600’s Sony sensor – and its wider dynamic range. Dynamic range describes the range of the camera’s sensor in accurately capturing whites to blacks – and the D600 ranked very highly at being able to capture one of the widest dynamic ranges. For a lot of my kind of photography, that dynamic range is important – so I opted to get the D600. I was also stimulated by my friend Doug Kaye’s Nikon passion and the fact that on many of the photo shoots we do together he brings along his wide assortment of Nikon lenses!
For the Havana trip, I mostly shot with the D600 kit lens – Nikon’s 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5 zoom lens – and it did a fabulous job. I mostly left the D600 on auto everything (ISO, Focus, P mode, etc.) and just shot away. I got some great shots – the camera did an wonderful job.
Recently, I decided to get the Nikon lens that seems to be everyone’s favorite for street photography on Nikon DSLR camera bodies – the Nikon 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom lens. On Saturday, I took this one lens up to San Francisco to shoot the annual San Francisco St. Patrick’s Day parade and, along the way, snapped this self-portrait image in the window at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. This is a great lens for street photography – the combination of its ability to go reasonably wide along with its ability to do a long zoom make for a near perfect lens for daytime street photography. Here’s another example of using the reach of this lens.
I’m still trying to master the autofocus options on my D600 – especially for street photography. The “double vision” in this image has nothing to do with those – it’s just the glass! – but I’m convinced that once I master those the D600 and this 28-300mm lens with be my ideal street photography rig. I’m anxious to do more exploring with it!
I felt a bit like I was back in Havana watching some of the classic cars that turned out yesterday to carry dignitaries in the annual Saint Patrick’s Day parade in San Francisco. This 1947 Chevrolet was one of the beauties!
I had fun processing this image in Photoshop – tweaking the background a bit to bring the car out more and adjusting the luminosity a bit. I love the angle of the car – the beauty of the chrome on the front grill – and that tail flying off of the radio antenna!
I had a good time yesterday shooting the Saint Patrick’s Day parade in San Francisco. This is a big parade – and folks have a great time watching and participating!
I parked at the Fifth and Mission Garage and then walked over to Market by way of Yerba Buena Gardens (my first stop – see yesterday’s image). Eventually, I got to Second and Market where the parade begins to stage – and where the light coming down Second St. was just great. (Much of the parade route is actually in the shade heading up Market St. because of the buildings blocking the sun on the south side of Market).
While watching and waiting, I noticed this fellow heading toward me and snapped a couple of quick shots of him – this one being the best. He looked great with his hair, shades and all!
I posted a few more of my St. Patrick’s Day photos over on InMenlo.com. Hope you enjoy them!
This morning I headed up to San Francisco to try my hand at some street photography during the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade. This parade is a big deal in San Francisco – and it was my first time heading out to try to shoot it. In hand, I had my Nikon D600 with the Nikon 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR II AF-S Nikkor Zoom Lens
But, before the parade began, I headed to another one of my favorite San Francisco venues – Yerba Buena Gardens. As I left Menlo Park this morning, we were fogged in – and I wondered what I would encounter weather wise as I got to San Francisco. As it turned out, no fog and brilliant morning sunlight washed across the beautiful Yerba Buena scene.
As I headed into the gardens, I noticed a lot of steam rising from over by the waterfall. As I headed closer, I could see a fellow was using a high pressure water blaster to clean the payment around the waterfall. This turned into a classic example of a “stage” – a place where you think something interesting is going to happen and you plant yourself as a photographer and just wait for it to unfold.
Earlier, he was working in the shadows to the left – a relatively uninteresting area given the poor light. But when he came out into this area – and began working the pavement and tiles being lit by the morning sun, everything got a lot more interesting. As I was shooting it, I thought this would probably work out best as a monochrome – but I left in just a touch of selective color on the worker’s face and hair. Such beautiful light!
Here’s an initial monochrome version of the Camperdown Elm photo from my walk at Filoli a couple of weeks ago. Handheld shot with my Nikon D600.
For this version, I used Nik’s Silver Efex Pro 2 do to a black and white conversion, darkening the lawn area up front and adding a bit of color to the highlights.
The “bones” of this tree are so beautiful – and the morning light that morning at Filoli was just right to light it up.
The light was amazing inside this market building in Havana. Coming in from the west over his shoulder. We made eye contact briefly before as I sought his permission. Then someone walked by and his eyes briefly followed. Shot with my Nikon D600.
I headed out this morning to Filoli – the beautiful estate and gardens in Woodside. This time of year, Filoli is known for its daffodils – and other bulb plantings.
I had my Nikon D600 in hand – which was just back from Nikon USA service having had its sensor replaced. This was a costly repair – for what I thought was a defect in the new camera that should have been fixed under warranty. But that’s another story. I wanted to get back out into the field with it – and see how it performed.
As I was walking Filoli, the light down this lawn area toward the distant tree – a Camperdown Elm – was especially beautiful. As I had done in Havana, I had the D600 in auto-everything – shooting in P mode with auto-ISO, auto-focus, etc. The camera opted to capture this image that I composed at 85mm at 1/800 at f/7.1 and ISO 1600.
Out of the camera, the image looked good – but it was a bit “flat” – with not much contrast between the light and dark areas. That’s what good cameras do – but the images often look a bit boring as a result.
Over the last couple of days, I became acquainted with some of the post-processing techniques of Aaron Nace. Not sure why I hadn’t come across him before – as he’s a master of Photoshop technique. But I hadn’t. One of his free tutorial videos was especially interesting to me – and I used some of his technique in post-processing this image – with the goal of making its tonal range much more interesting to the eye. I really like the result.
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