OK, one last San Francisco picture
© Peter Rozovsky 2010
Labels: Bouchercon 2010, images, noir photos, San Francisco, what I did on my vacation
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 12:08 AM
Saturday, November 27, 2010
About Me
- Name: Peter Rozovsky
- Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
This blog is a proud winner of the 2009 Spinetingler Award for special services to the industry and its blogkeeper a proud former guest on Wisconsin Public Radio's Here on Earth. In civilian life I'm a copy editor in Philadelphia. When not reading crime fiction, I like to read history. When doing neither, I like to travel. When doing none of the above, I like listening to music or playing it, the latter rarely and badly. Click here to find an independent bookstore near you.
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26 Comments:
Smashing pic.
Now that would make a striking book cover.
I love the old red car in the back. Very SF Noir.
This is so beautiful.
Much obliged, folks. I think of my work as evocative of Weegee, but without the people.
Thanks, Patti. Someone made a similar comment about some photos I took in Houston. I was thinking of buying a digital camera with higher resolution so I could blow the pictures up and display them.
Thanks, C.B. The red car was a happy coincidence, and your comment gives me the idea of manipulating the photo's colors to heighten the red.
The car's shape is felicitous, too. The vehicle is not an old car, but rather one of the new Austin Minis. That car's rounded edges are evovative of Bogartian cars like some of these.
Thanks, P à D. I'm especially chuffed at your comment given that you're quite a shooter yourself.
(Photographe à Dublin is, as you'll guess from her name, a photographer. Her work includes this crime-novel cover. It would be worth your while to read what's under that cover, too.)
Hmmm, looks yer quintessential 'falling over drunk' angled photograph to me!
Nope, I had ducked behind the trash can on a stakeout. The red Mini putt-putted to life. I stood to snap it, and something a lot bigger than a Mini barrelled down Hyde Street and knocked me sconce over keister. But I got the photo, and that's all that mattered.
is that stakeout, or steakout, when you were happily munching on a doublecheeseburger when you got the 'Eureka moment'
Love the 'Fort Knox' colo(u)r glow, by the way, but it just doesn't cut the mustard as 'noir'
Black and white rules!
If yellow doesn't cut the mustard as noir, but the way, I'll settle for "eerie" or "unsettling."
Black and white it is, then.
My odd-angled night shots are serendipitous. I don't carry a tripod, so if I want to shoot at night, with the long exposures that requres, I have to prop the camera on whatever firm, hard surface is at hand -- in this case, the trash can in the foreground -- and those surfaces are not always parallel or at a 90-degree angle to the ground.
Many thanks for your generous compliment.
One way to get over the tripod problem is to carry a small travel tripod and use it as a brace.
It does make a good difference.
Here's to mamy more excellent photo shoots.
Thanks for the kind wishes. I generally consider lack of a tripod less a problem than a welcome test of my resourcefulness. But I have considered a small travel tripod, and maybe I'll buy one and hope that it does not interfere with the spontaneity of my night walks.
P à D, I forgot to mention that I took your advice when I prepared the black and white version of this photo. Instead of converting to black and white, I set the saturation to zero. The result is a richer black and white, with almost a blue tinge. I think those ads that I see that aren't quite sepia-toned and yet not quite pure black and white either must do something similar.
Patti, re your comment, "Now that would make a striking book cover."
But if it were destined for a crime fiction book cover a shadowy male figure in a long topcoat, walking away from the photographer, would inevitably be Photoshopped in.
Gad! I'm so sick of this overdone image on book covers. Enough already.
Elisabeth, the cover of the book I am reading now has a shadowy figure on the cover, but it's female, and it isn't walking anywhere. I wonder how book covers without people on them go over with the crime-buying public. By pure coincidence, another photo I posted recently has a space that just cries out for a title, an author's name, and a blurb.
I'm delighted the tip on desaturation works for you.
Tweaking contrast is also useful.
Here are some helpful photo editors that have the advantage of being free and they do not clog up hard drive.
helpful photo editors
Thanks, I tweak contrast with washed-out photos. But the desaturation tip for turning color into black and white was a real eye-opener.
I may have mentioned this in a previous comment, but I'll often
see ads in which part of the image is reduced to almost black and white, with only the product in full color. I wonder if desaturation is responsible.
The quickest way to make a photo where a spot of colour is retained in a BW context is to use Picasa.
This editor has a series of colour toning and desaturation features and the one you need is "Focal Black and White".
This thread explains how it works, and, as you can see, it can be more or less successful, depending on the position
of the colured area.
I have to admit I find it a bit old fashioned and the most remarkable use of this technique was in the film "Schindler's List", where it is remarkably successful.
If you do a search for "Pleasantville effect bw color" you will find many helpful sites that explain further.
A recent series of ads for Tullamore Dew here used a technique that achieved similar effect and also heightened brightness in spots. The main color scheme was something like sepia tone, with only the three drinkers' raised glasses in full color -- and the brighness turned up on their gleaming teeth. This made them look a bit like monsters looming out of the dark in an old-fashioned horror movie.
Everybody knows that whiskey makes your teeth shine...
I thought it made your nose shine.
... and your chin...
I lack the experience to know what whiskey does to one's chin unless one stumbles and lands on the chin.
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