Tag Archives: Montreal

Le Piano Rouge – Montreal 2010

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Le Piano Rouge

Seizing the moment is critical.  Montreal’s financial and Old Town districts are alive with street musicians, artists, and just plain quirky character of all descriptions.  Wander the streets with you camera in hand, shutter cocked and aperture set for sun or building shade, and be ready!

If you can, make your image tell a story – or better yet, make the viewer begin to tell his own story.  I managed to catch the energy of this busker by being prepared to shoot in an instant.  He was just setting up to play, so an interfering crowd had not yet gathered, and I managed to connect both him and his amused and admiring female friend in the background.  With this connection, the image begins to tell a story, and we begin to wonder about them.  Is she his girlfriend? Or just a passerby who stopped on the steps of Le Piano Rouge to watch?  Will they go inside in the evening to share an intimate dinner from his day’s busking?  These questions draw us in, make us linger, and make the picture greater than the busker himself.

Here, an eye level finder is a must.  Much as I love my cameras from the 19-teens and twenties, the tiny finders of that era, designed for waist-level use, are almost impossible to use accurately or quickly in a situation like this.  Most miniature plate cameras, and and a few of the 1920s roll film cameras, have folding wire finders that can be used for sports photography.  These function well in action situations, and have the added advantage of attracting interested bystanders, one of the most rewarding aspects of vintage camera photography.  Furthermore, most subjects are happy to be photographed by someone with such an unusual camera!

As with most of this Montreal sequence, this was shot with the Ensign 820 with the Ross Xpres lens on Ilford XP-2 at f/11 and 1/200 sec.  The image required only local contrast enhancement and minor adjustments for brightness, contrast and Curves despite the harsh summer light.

 

Waiting for Manna – Montreal, 2010

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Waiting for Manna

A new image,  “Waiting for Manna”, in my series of street photography from Montreal.  A young panhandler naps or meditates, totally cut off from the world around him, while a passerby disappears into the edge of the frame. The hot summer sun bathes the scene, the windows reflect the bustling life of the Montreal streets, yet the scene speaks of isolation and disconnection. The Ross Xpres lens on my Ensign 820 captured the scene in crisp detail on XP-2.

The Sunny f/16 rule dictated 1/200 second at f/16, allowing both excellent depth of field and a fast shutter speed to freeze the pedestrians’ movement.  Fortunately, this scene included only sunny areas in the critical regions, eliminating the struggle to preserve detail between the sun-bleached street and shade under awnings.  The original 6×9 cm image included much distracting detail from windows at the upper end of the picture.  Cropping from the top to a square image drew in the busy pedestrian world with the remaining reflections, while juxtaposing the napping panhandler and disappearing pedestrian in opposite corners of a square image.  This creates a tension between the passive napper and the passerby, who disappears in the distance without interacting with the panhandler, emphasizing the young man’s disconnection from the street’s activity.