Alf_Myers
FollowA London Tea shop.
A London Tea shop.
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Behind The Lens
Location
The image was taken in London, we were walking down Neal Street towards Covent Gardens when I spotted the lovely shop. Being a keen street photographer I saw the potential and then just had to wait for a little while to get the image.Time
When exploring a city or town I'll walk for hours, normally with my other half or with a few friends. This was a day like that, we'd both been out for hours and were making our way to find a nice tea room/coffee shop for a little break. it was around 14:30 on a cold November's day.Lighting
Lighting, well it is all natural apart from the little lights in the shop window which I didn't have any control over. Being on Neal Street, the combination of it being a cloudy day and being somewhat of an alley meant that the light hitting the street was soft.Equipment
It was taken on a Canon EOS 5D Mk III with a 24-70mm f2.8 L series lens. This is one of the set-ups I use for street, my alternative is an Olympus OMD EM5 Mk II with a 12-40mm lens, a much lighter system all round.Inspiration
The wonderful window display was just calling out and had to be taken. That along with the lovely red bricks, it was just a case of waiting for that right moment.Editing
There has been a good bit of post processing involved in this image. I use Lightrooms for the bulk of my edits and in this case, I will have desaturated the image, I'm not one for producing overly saturated images. Following on from that I've taken it into Photoshop to do some ascetic corrections (yes that has been some photoshop work done.) Firstly, I too it at a bit of an angle and therefore needed to correct a parallax issue. Then, as I had missed the top of the Tea House sign so had to rebuild it to give the image a little more breathing room. The other thing was to rebuild part of the brickwork above the man's head, which previously made him look like he had a massive top hat on. Some purists will be turning in the grave at that news.In my camera bag
These days it is more than likely going to be the Olympus with my one and only Olympus lens. If not, it will be the Canon 5d, with a 7d as a back-up, plus a 24-70mm f2.8, 70-200mm f2.8 and a little 50mm f.1.8 for fun.Feedback
For me, street photography is all about observation. Looking for man's touch and seeing something interesting in the normal. To be honest, shots like this are easy, find a background and wait. The people will come, but you need them to be a little different. Also, if you're nervous about talking a picture of strangers on the streets because of the reaction they may have, this is probably the "safest" methods - you tend to find people apologising for ruining your shot.