“BEHIND THE SCENES – WITH DOUG”
This time in “Behind the scenes” the photo is taken by Marko from Croatia.
The photo was taken in the small town of Labin, Croatia. It was August of 2009 and it was a hot summer day. Since I was a tourist, while sightseeing, I had my camera ready for just about anything.
Other kids were playing around, but those two came to my attention because, unlike the other kids, they were selling seashells. They seemed a bit bored sitting there, like parents told them to do so, unable to play with other kids. I did not want to be rude just by snapping a photo and then walking away. I figured out they would be more open to me if I bought something so I bought a seashell. I think that’s the best approach with “merchants”; they will be more comfortable in presence of a camera if I buy something. I can spare some change for a good photo.
I usually try to take street photos while being discrete (hipshot or telephoto lens), but for the first time I tried “buy something before you shoot” approach and it turned out great. The street was just to narrow to be discrete.
I’ve tried many photographic styles, but in last 2 or 3 years, I’ve found myself shooting mostly street and spontaneous photos. This photo in particular was shot while attending Croatian Photography Association summer workshop and it’s the part of “Istrian Heritage” series. Istria is the western Croatian county.
I used a Canon EOS 400D with Sigma 10-20 f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM. The streets in Labin are really narrow so wide angle lens is the most effective.
The postprocessing is done in Adobe Lightroom and it’s the basic one:
- crop to 1:1 format
- conversion to BW
(In Lightroom, there is one-click conversion to BW. Since Lightroom works on different principle than Photoshop, it remembers every information before the final save. After conversion, I can easily finetune it using HSL (Hue, Saturation, Lightness) sliders for every color (RGB, CYM and additional orange, purple and aqua). I can also adjust Hue and Saturation for RGB channels).
- curves for contrast
- clarity for midtone contrast
- sharpen a bit
- corrected lens distortion (ultrawide lens)
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