Hohner in Hamburg

This Polish accordian player propped himself and his Hohner and his

chair against a building in Hamburg, Germany's downdown shopping

district in late Spring during a rainstorm, and began to play for

passersby in the evening hours soon after the sun was down. Nikon

D70, Nikkor 24~120 f 3.5~5.6D, without flash or fill. Image

adjustment to vivid. Photo is unmanipulated, full frame. Your

ratings and comments are very welcome! (Please honor me by

submitting helpful and constructive comments with any harsh or

substantially negative ratings/share your superior knowledge to help

me improve my photography) Thanks and Enjoy! John.

Aahh, beautiful! There is a strong presence in this photo, i think this can work in B/W too..

very effective portrait - good lighting and composition. the only minor suggestion i have is cloning out the change in wall color on the far left side - no need to call attention to it. or you could just crop it off, thought that might be a tad too close to the watch/wrist.

When I began photography, I could not afford to photograph in color; not only that but I could not even afford to enlarge my prints and lacked access to a darkroom and therefore had to make do with viewing contact sheets and/or negs. As a result, you generally will find strong compositional elements in my photography, as the only way I could evaluate my earlier work was to view it with a loop as I bent over a contact sheet or negatives on a light box. So, you probably will find that not only this photo, but much of my other color work also will do well in B & W. John.

You have a very watchful (no pun intended) eye. This photo was shot in "vivid" mode on my D70, which as I have found out tends to underexpose almost everything by about a f stop and to minimize rather than maximize the contrast -- which is why it is called "vivid". It is supposed to work particularly well with "reds" as it appears to here. But the result is that such photos have to be lightened. Note that although I say this photo is "unmanipulated" I note that it was restored to its original exposure -- which is to say I used "curves" to lighten it, as I have had to do with all photos taken in the "vivid" mode, until I realized the problem "vivid" mode was causing on the D70. Yes, "vivid" mode does create beautiful saturation, but only if you actually do uncompress the saturation by using "curves" to undo part of that saturation. The point is that on the original, the wall color change was practically invisible, and is barely visible here -- you have a good eye to notice it. As I am a "you shoot it as you find it and post it as you shoot it" photographer, I still would choose to leave it alone, since I don't have any beer, household cleanser, or other products to sell through my images and my images don't have to be perfect. (Of course if there's a previously unobserved tree branch growing out of someone's ear, perhaps that's another matter . . . .) John

boy it took me 2 reads to get what you were saying ;) so you had to undo what you purposefully had to do in the first place. my friend just bought a D70 so hopefully i'll get to play with it this week. once again, great shot!

Well, I had chosen "vivid" because I rightly supposed it would emphasize the colors, and not knowing more, it would have been the correct decision for my new camera. But the tradeoff was that there was a marked falloff in exposure (underexposure) resulting in images that had to be lightened -- something that was not intentional on my part, and which made viewing the "raw" and jpeg images difficult when unloaded. When lightened, they were full of color and saturation, but it was a two-step process. John.