U4ban Walls in B&W
My earlier pic of the residential building alleyway in black & white. I think it looks more quaint... if that makes sense....
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My earlier pic of the residential building alleyway in black & white. I think it looks more quaint... if that makes sense.
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Jan, 2017Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
I took this photo in a residential building alleyway. There are lots of apartment buildings, but this is the only one I've seen that's divided by an alley like this, and the symmetry was instantly captivating to me.Time
This was around noontime, when the sun was overhead, but not shining directly into the alley, allowing for some nice shadows and contrast.Lighting
Yes! The lighting was what captivated me in the first place. The patterns from the apartment windows together with the natural shadows caused by the noontime sun created an image that just draws you in similar to some Matrix drawings. I initially took this photo in color, but decided it worked better in B&W because the color didn't add anything to the photo, in fact, quite the opposite. The color was distracting me from the beautiful lines and symmetry so when I turned the image grayscale, my initial expression was "Wow!".Equipment
I actually didn't have a good camera on me at this point, and since I normally don't go to this area, I just whipped out my Samsung Galaxy Exhibit. (No, not the high-end Galaxy phones, just a cheapo budget model from 2013.) Needless to say, that wasn't the best camera, but I think it was just good enough for this capture.Inspiration
I'm usually attracted to symmetry and am always looking to photograph things in new ways and from interesting angles. So when I saw the leading lines in this alleyway, I couldn't resist. I remember saying, "Wow! This is perfect!". Indeed, it felt like perfect framing so I just took the photo with my phone without worrying to much about technicalities. I didn't have a tripod on hand, so I just steadied the phone with my hands. It came out somewhat crooked at first, but I easily fixed that in post.Editing
Well, the first thing I did was steady the shot and make it level by rotating and then cropping. Snapseed for Android makes this really easy. I use Snapseed pretty much for everything. If I remember correctly, I used Snapseed's Detail tool and increased the "Structure" to bring out the details in the brick walls. I then adjusted the levels. I increased the contrast uniformly at first and then added more or less in certain areas in the photo. To be honest, I didn't make the photo grayscale at all in the first edit, that was actually done later when I noticed a distracting red curtain in one of the windows. When I finally did do it, wow, it was like night and day difference. The distracting elements were removed and I could finally concentrate on the beautiful symmetry. The title was initially "Urban Walls", but it later became "U4ban Walls in B&W". Fun fact: the "4" is next to the "r" in my phone's keyboard and I didn't realize I made this mistake in typing until after I saved the image, so this was just a fun typo that I decided to leave in.In my camera bag
A phone that I use as my primary camera because it's all I have available (A cheap Samsung phone with a 5MP camera, but I will be upgrading to the much better Asus ZenFone 5 soon!), a mini tripod or selfie stick (depending on what sort of photography I'm doing that day), and some cheap mobile lenses from Amazon.com. I really don't feel anyone needs those super expensive cameras to take good pictures, especially considering the advances made in smartphone cameras these days.Feedback
Look around, look up, and look down. Interesting things are all around you just waiting to be captured. Be creative, take shots from upclose or from above, do things differently. I think anyone could take good pictures if they just focus on what they're trying to capture and less about the technicalities.
