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Little tip for how to deal with street traffic
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 01, 2013 12:59 pm    Post subject: Little tip for how to deal with street traffic Reply with quote
I use one of my photos to share with you a little tip that I always try to use whenever is possible when you must include a street in the photo:



The tip is this: remember that in a photograph, cars are like people: they look good when photographed in front, and look bad
when photographed from the back.
So, when you must include a trafficked street in a photograph, wait for a moment when there are only cars that come your way,
and no cars going away. This way, your street traffic photo will look better.
Simple but effective! Smile


PostPosted: Sun Sep 01, 2013 1:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Thank you you are so right.


PostPosted: Sun Sep 01, 2013 1:15 pm    Post subject: Re: Little tip for how to deal with street traffic Reply with quote
Orio wrote:


The tip is this: remember that in a photograph, cars are like people: they look good when photographed in front, and look bad
when photographed from the back.
So, when you must include a trafficked street in a photograph, wait for a moment when there are only cars that come your way,
and no cars going away. This way, your street traffic photo will look better.
Simple but effective! Smile



Good to know thanks, but I was taking some street night shots in Ibiza town (close to the road), and the cars coming towards me had their headlights on, so waited till I saw the back of the cars. Wink


PostPosted: Sun Sep 01, 2013 1:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
I think it depends on the situation. If I am just merely capturing the street then car shouldn't be an issue but if I have a subject then I def wouldn't want to distract people away from the subject with a car in their way


PostPosted: Sun Sep 01, 2013 1:22 pm    Post subject: Re: Little tip for how to deal with street traffic Reply with quote
Excalibur wrote:

Good to know thanks, but I was taking some street night shots in Ibiza town (close to the road), and the cars coming towards me had their headlights on, so waited till I saw the back of the cars. Wink


Nothing that a careful exposure can't handle Wink :



PostPosted: Sun Sep 01, 2013 1:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
mzzyhmd wrote:
I think it depends on the situation. If I am just merely capturing the street then car shouldn't be an issue but if I have a subject then I def wouldn't want to distract people away from the subject with a car in their way


The point is: there are subjects (like the one in the first photo) where it's either cars in, or nothing.
You can of course give up taking the photo, but then?...
Alternatively, you can wait for a moment when the traffic looks good enough (for how good a car traffic can look) to let you take a better photo.
Showing only the "face" of the cars helps greatly with that.


PostPosted: Sun Sep 01, 2013 2:38 pm    Post subject: Re: Little tip for how to deal with street traffic Reply with quote
Orio wrote:
Excalibur wrote:

Good to know thanks, but I was taking some street night shots in Ibiza town (close to the road), and the cars coming towards me had their headlights on, so waited till I saw the back of the cars. Wink


Nothing that a careful exposure can't handle Wink :



That's an excellent shot...I'm rusty on night shots so let the camera work out the exposure and didn't want the headlights fooling the exposure meter Laughing But I find street scenes can be difficult esp if there is a mass of people walking around with all the cafes and bars lit up as there is nothing that is the "subject" to focus on (just a mass of confusion).....so after two shots I gave up. Anyway if I think the shots look interesting I'll post them and accept the members view whether they are crap or whatever Laughing


PostPosted: Sun Sep 01, 2013 3:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Thanks Smile You are perfectly correct in not wanting the car lamps fool your exposure meter! Of course the crowd as a subject can be a problem,
but it's a different type of problem (a subject problem, not an exposure problem).

Night shots require a somewhat different exposure mindframe than daylight shots. First of all, one needs to start with the mental attitude that there is no way you can record everything,
the dynamic range exceeds largely both that of digital cameras and film cameras. The highest lights need to go, so the darkest areas.
In the middle (if there is any...) one needs to choose what to give priority to, instead of simply compromise between different areas, which is the daylight attitude.
Night does not allow compromises.
It's an interesting subject, maybe I'll write about it someday!


PostPosted: Sun Sep 01, 2013 4:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
what a great tip! i never thought of that, but its totally true. thanks!
tony


PostPosted: Sun Sep 01, 2013 4:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Orio wrote:
Thanks Smile You are perfectly correct in not wanting the car lamps fool your exposure meter! Of course the crowd as a subject can be a problem,
but it's a different type of problem (a subject problem, not an exposure problem).

Night shots require a somewhat different exposure mindframe than daylight shots. First of all, one needs to start with the mental attitude that there is no way you can record everything,
the dynamic range exceeds largely both that of digital cameras and film cameras. The highest lights need to go, so the darkest areas.
In the middle (if there is any...) one needs to choose what to give priority to, instead of simply compromise between different areas, which is the daylight attitude.
Night does not allow compromises.
It's an interesting subject, maybe I'll write about it someday!


Well I thought after driving past the mass of people at 1:00 am and seeing all the night clubs and bars lit, I thought I could have captured the atmosphere on single shots, but a video would have been better. But I did get some strange looks from people with a film camera, on a tripod, over my shoulder Laughing


PostPosted: Sun Sep 01, 2013 5:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
philslizzy wrote:
Thank you you are so right.


rbelyell wrote:
what a great tip! i never thought of that, but its totally true. thanks!
tony


Philslizzy, Rbelyell, thanks, you are welcome! Smile


PostPosted: Sun Sep 01, 2013 5:53 pm    Post subject: Re: Little tip for how to deal with street traffic Reply with quote
Excalibur wrote:
...I'm rusty on night shots so let the camera work out the exposure and didn't want the headlights fooling the exposure meter Laughing But I find street scenes can be difficult esp if there is a mass of people walking around with all the cafes and bars lit up as there is nothing that is the "subject" to focus on (just a mass of confusion).....so after two shots I gave up.


Here are a couple of techniques that I use. For a shot like Orio's above with the headlights on, since there is still light in the sky, what I would do in that instance is point my camera up a bit so I would be metering the sky. Lock in that reading, then recompose and shoot. I use this same method for sunsets. I meter the sky directly overhead. Doing so overexposes the sun (inevitable), but it gives me all the colors that occur around the sun and elsewhere. For dark nights, if I'm shooting something that's lit up, that's a little more difficult. For instance, if I'm shooting for nighttime lights, I can't really measure that meaningfully. If I'm shooting a subject that is illuminated, then that is somewhat easier. But if the subject is a small portion of the photo and the rest is mostly dark, then it gets a little trickier. I discovered by accident that if I just set my camera for flash and shoot at the nighttime subject -- which is too distant for the flash to have any effect -- that often I get good exposures with nighttime lights, and with subjects that are being illuminated by these lights, often they're correctly exposed too. Admittedly, this second technique is just a "shot in the dark" if you will, but often it works.


PostPosted: Sun Sep 01, 2013 6:36 pm    Post subject: Re: Little tip for how to deal with street traffic Reply with quote
cooltouch wrote:
Excalibur wrote:
...I'm rusty on night shots so let the camera work out the exposure and didn't want the headlights fooling the exposure meter Laughing But I find street scenes can be difficult esp if there is a mass of people walking around with all the cafes and bars lit up as there is nothing that is the "subject" to focus on (just a mass of confusion).....so after two shots I gave up.


Here are a couple of techniques that I use. For a shot like Orio's above with the headlights on, since there is still light in the sky, what I would do in that instance is point my camera up a bit so I would be metering the sky. Lock in that reading, then recompose and shoot. I use this same method for sunsets. I meter the sky directly overhead. Doing so overexposes the sun (inevitable), but it gives me all the colors that occur around the sun and elsewhere. For dark nights, if I'm shooting something that's lit up, that's a little more difficult. For instance, if I'm shooting for nighttime lights, I can't really measure that meaningfully. If I'm shooting a subject that is illuminated, then that is somewhat easier. But if the subject is a small portion of the photo and the rest is mostly dark, then it gets a little trickier. I discovered by accident that if I just set my camera for flash and shoot at the nighttime subject -- which is too distant for the flash to have any effect -- that often I get good exposures with nighttime lights, and with subjects that are being illuminated by these lights, often they're correctly exposed too. Admittedly, this second technique is just a "shot in the dark" if you will, but often it works.


Good tips, but I think the problem for any night street shooter faced with swarms of people, rows of clubs, cafes, bars, parked cars with traffic is how to keep it simple to differentiate it from just a snap.....Maybe the faces of the clubbers\tourists walking towards me with the clubs etc out of focus in the background might work for the few shots I took. Surprised


PostPosted: Sun Sep 01, 2013 8:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Great tip Orio and great examples to illustrate!


PostPosted: Sun Sep 01, 2013 9:03 pm    Post subject: Re: Little tip for how to deal with street traffic Reply with quote
Excalibur wrote:

Good tips, but I think the problem for any night street shooter faced with swarms of people, rows of clubs, cafes, bars, parked cars with traffic is how to keep it simple to differentiate it from just a snap.....Maybe the faces of the clubbers\tourists walking towards me with the clubs etc out of focus in the background might work for the few shots I took. Surprised


One technique I played around with some was to set my camera on a tripod with flash mounted and a shutter release cable attached. I'd set the shutter to "B" and stop the lens down quite a bit -- say f/16. I was also using slow slide film, probably Kodachrome 64. So anyway, I'd focus on a scene where there was some activity. Then I'd trip the shutter, hold it open and pop the flash three or four times, spaced a few seconds apart, then close the shutter. The results were interesting. I'd get images of a person frozen in mid-stride with a ghostly trail of their leg movements following them. People in one place then another. Blurs as a person moved then the person's image frozen as the flash popped. You can get some very surreal stuff working with slow shutter speeds and a flash at night.


PostPosted: Sun Sep 01, 2013 9:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Like all the best ideas, it's simple and very effective.


PostPosted: Sun Sep 01, 2013 11:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Lloydy wrote:
Like all the best ideas, it's simple and very effective.


Thanks Smile


PostPosted: Sun Sep 01, 2013 11:45 pm    Post subject: Re: Little tip for how to deal with street traffic Reply with quote
cooltouch wrote:
Excalibur wrote:

Good tips, but I think the problem for any night street shooter faced with swarms of people, rows of clubs, cafes, bars, parked cars with traffic is how to keep it simple to differentiate it from just a snap.....Maybe the faces of the clubbers\tourists walking towards me with the clubs etc out of focus in the background might work for the few shots I took. Surprised


One technique I played around with some was to set my camera on a tripod with flash mounted and a shutter release cable attached. I'd set the shutter to "B" and stop the lens down quite a bit -- say f/16. I was also using slow slide film, probably Kodachrome 64. So anyway, I'd focus on a scene where there was some activity. Then I'd trip the shutter, hold it open and pop the flash three or four times, spaced a few seconds apart, then close the shutter. The results were interesting. I'd get images of a person frozen in mid-stride with a ghostly trail of their leg movements following them. People in one place then another. Blurs as a person moved then the person's image frozen as the flash popped. You can get some very surreal stuff working with slow shutter speeds and a flash at night.


Something like this guy?

http://www.alexeytitarenko.com/port_cityshadows.html


PostPosted: Tue Sep 03, 2013 8:45 pm    Post subject: Re: Little tip for how to deal with street traffic Reply with quote
fuzzywuzzy wrote:
cooltouch wrote:
Excalibur wrote:

Good tips, but I think the problem for any night street shooter faced with swarms of people, rows of clubs, cafes, bars, parked cars with traffic is how to keep it simple to differentiate it from just a snap.....Maybe the faces of the clubbers\tourists walking towards me with the clubs etc out of focus in the background might work for the few shots I took. Surprised


One technique I played around with some was to set my camera on a tripod with flash mounted and a shutter release cable attached. I'd set the shutter to "B" and stop the lens down quite a bit -- say f/16. I was also using slow slide film, probably Kodachrome 64. So anyway, I'd focus on a scene where there was some activity. Then I'd trip the shutter, hold it open and pop the flash three or four times, spaced a few seconds apart, then close the shutter. The results were interesting. I'd get images of a person frozen in mid-stride with a ghostly trail of their leg movements following them. People in one place then another. Blurs as a person moved then the person's image frozen as the flash popped. You can get some very surreal stuff working with slow shutter speeds and a flash at night.


Something like this guy?

http://www.alexeytitarenko.com/port_cityshadows.html



Well I got a motorcycle blurred Laughing But this snap shows why I gave up on my street shots....organised chaos.

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