I just submitted my first image in the Urban category and am looking forward to capturing a few more. I like the idea of this category as it encompasses elements from many of the others; it can be portrait, documentary, action or black and white.
Looking through the current batch of entries and I am pleased to see quite a few which have the "I wish I had taken that photo." quality.
My first image is called "brother, can you spare a dime?"
It was taken whilst on a holiday trip to Paris. I was walking along the Champs Elysees looking at all of the great photographic opportunites and I stopped when I saw this women. The vertical lines and juxtaposition of her poverty and the shop's wealth was too good to miss. As I set the shot up I wanted to leave the shutter slow enough to blur all the people walking past. Like B_Lucy has commented the poor and homeless are often called "The Faceless Masses" and by blurring the passers-by I wanted to show that she wasn't the only faceless one (before anyone asks I did give her some Euros after taking the picture).
The image was adjusted using Lightroom only (I don't yet own a phot editing tool like Elements or CS3). I initially used a preset I got from Matt Kloskowski's website Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips, I don't think it was one of his but a preset he recommended from someone else (sorry to them for not remembering)... It was called "Old time look w vignette". After that I made some adjustments to the exposure, clarity, fill lighting and fixed a few chromatic issues until finally cropping it to the square... The original had too much dead space in the top third.
Anyway, this is my first entry in a major competition so I am looking forward to getting plenty of advice and feedback (of course there is always the hope I may win). Good luck everyone.
Demosthien
My POTY 2008 Entries"Loyalty above all else; except honour."
(=II=)