Lights of the Market
While staying in Raleigh, I was experimenting with the Sony A7r and exploring its capabilities. I went inside a lively fresh market with many bright colors and unique products and produce. It was a fairly large building that I actually went into after walking around outside where the State Farmers Market was taking place. The camera has a variety of different presets and filters that you can use in live mode with your camera. I decided to try out the pop color filter and actually walked around with my camera to eye (kinda funny when you picture that).
It was like a different world that my eyes were now open to: Bright, vibrant colors, unique objects standing out, and many of colorful lights. Since I had my 35mm Voigtlander f/1.2 lens on, I decided to play around with the lights and some bokeh. I saw this man at wine tasting second and only had a few seconds to frame this man with the lights and bottles around him. What I really like about this shot is it is somewhat exaggerated with the colors and contrast and creates a really different reality out of daily life.
The Multiverse
This is a picture of a movie theater in Key West that had a really cool art deco design. My idea here was to play with light and wave my Leica X1 around in the air to get an abstract look.
In Lightroom, I boosted up the contrast to the max to get a completely black background and which also gave the shapes more “layers” for a little bit of a 3D effect. I also bumped up the saturation to make the colors pop more. “The Multiverse” title I feel really defines this shot because the wispy white boxes seem infinite and the theater itself looks to have several dimensions to it. There is also the fact that because it is a movie theater and there are multiple movies being shown that are “sucking you in” as if they were portals to different realities.
Alley in Rome
This shot was taken with my old Nikon D40 when I was 11 years old visiting Rome, Italy. One morning as I was walking down the tiny staircase in my hotel (try not tripping on one of those old tiny european staircases), I looked out one of the windows and saw a true glimpse of what daily life was like in Rome on this Bustling Street. I believe that it was this moment when I actually was first introduced to street photography. Years later in my post-processing in Lightroom, I warmed up the scene with temperature adjustments, played around with the light and then brought it over to DXO Labs and applied a vintage film camera preset. This created a 1960s ambiance that made the colors pop, added film grain, and overall really defined the moment I experienced when looking out the window.
Beautiful Japanese Garden
While walking through an amazing Japanese Garden in Florida, these beautiful bright flowers caught my eye. When I walked up to them, this perfect scene emerged before my eyes. I saw little purple flowers a little ways behind the bright pink flowers, a beautiful lake, and the Japanese museum on an island sitting on the lake just come together. Before even raising my Leica X1 to capture the moment, I had already composed the shot with my eyes and I believe that sometimes that can be the best way to compose a photograph. After taking the shot, I was amazed at how my Leica Elmarit 35mm equivalent lens was able to get as nice of bokeh in the background as it did. After playing around with the f/stop a little bit, I decided to go down all the way to f/2.8 to get the nicest bokeh to make the moment.
Carnival Squash
Late last year, I went up to a State Farmers Market. There we were so many stands and vendors that I just took my time and explored the place. Since I was still fairly new to my Sony A7r, I decided to experiment with some of the settings. There was a live pop color preset that when you look through the lens, all of the colors around you were full of life and saturation. As I was strolling around, I actually was looking through the camera most of the time. Then I came across what looked like small, brightly colored pumpkins. They immediately caught my eye and stood out from the rest of the other produce around me. By asking a few questions, I learned that they were in fact not pumpkins, but a unique fruit called carnival squash. They are characterized by their array of autumn hues, striped colored patterns, and their pumpkin-like appearance.
In post processing, I recreated the moment I had when I first looked at the carnival squash by vignetting the majority of distracting elements. This way the focus is on the carnival squash so it looks like it is emerging from the rest of the fruits and vegetables. I also gave the fruit a “golden magic” appearance that would give the fruit presence and attract all the attention of the viewer.
