San Francisco with the XT1

I appreciate the detailed explanation.
I agree the "clarity" slider is an odd on in LR- a little bit is fantastic for adding a little punch to the image, and a little bit more can completely collapse it.

I take and work on roughly 100 images a day (some days significantly more) and distortion correction is part of my workflow. It's worth mentioning that I do product photography and distortion correction (however minute) is a significant variable. My work has made me more sensitive to it than I'd like to be.

I'll soon be switching over to Fuji, and posts such as yours (and many by Rico) are extremely useful. Thank you.
 
Hey All,

Ray I see your point about densification and can see the reality of it's necessity. But I grew up on farms and ranches in Montana - I can't live in that environment. Too crowded too manicured - and yes I don't much like English gardens. I'll put it this way if I can't take a leak in my backyard it's too crowded. But returning to photography.

What drew me to your image was not compressed distance or colour or even composition - but subject matter. If the subject matter is there then all those other things come into play. All those other elements have one purpose - to help express the subject. I can't tell you how many photos I see where my instinct says pretty but no depth or purpose. Now don't misunderstand I like pretty and look at lots of pretty images too but too many of those images is like eating too much candy - tasty but leaves you hungry for something else. At the end of a bout with pretty I almost always end up needing to pull a book of the shelf of new topographics images or my favorite - those taken by the FSA photographers. Others probably go find a book by Diane Arbus or some street photographer. Like art I guess it often just comes down to what really fills you up.

As for zooming with your feet - sometimes you simply can't and that is where long and short lenses can help you. Also distance compression doesn't have to happen if you use a foreground element. Anyway really nice images - victorian architecture is beautiful and San Fran is full of it as are towns like Eureka where the famous Carson Mansion is.

I see where you use velvia a lot I'm going to have to use it more as provia is a bit bland. Do you use a lot of "in camera" settings like colour, sharpness, etc?

-Ed-

Fair enough on your preference for open spaces, but just be damn glad not EVERYONE feels that way because there's nowhere near enough to go around! :D

I get your point about wanting photos of more substance, but I'm increasingly happy with candy... When I'm shooting on the street I'm going for more, but in a sense my street work is candy too - I tend to go for genuine human moments / interactions, and they can be happy just as often as sad, conflicted, etc. And I'm OK with that - I'm not out to depress or impress myself or others with the darkness of my vision. People enjoying each other is just as human and genuine as people in the throes of despair. I was more into despair when I was younger - now days I consider candy a good part of a balanced meal! :D And when I'm traveling to a place I haven't spent a lot of time, I really just enjoy seeing it with new eyes and I'm usually content just to catch some fleeting bit of the beauty I see around me. I spent a month on the Amalfi Coast in Italy last summer and almost every one of my shots was an attempt at capturing just a bit of the overwhelming beauty of the place. I did one or two street shots that might have done a bit more than that, but that was the bulk of it. And I'm frankly happier with it than just about anything else I've shot in the past few years. If I can do similarly here, I'm good with that. And if I can do some portion of that with interesting images and compositions, even better...

-Ray
 
A rainy, drizzly day today. I was a little paranoid with the camera at first because the lenses aren't sealed, but I finally figured what the hell, it's not raining HARD... So I did some shooting with the 18, 23, and 14, but barely touched the telephoto today. Went and saw the Haight Ashbury - my daughter hadn't seen it - and the Good Old Grateful Dead house, which has been thoroughly yuppified and looks waaaay better than it did when all of that music was being created in the place. The rest of the place is a sort of hilarious museum shop of the past, but I guess it pretty much had become that by about 1971 or 1972. Then up to billionaire's row in Pacific Heights (only 6-7 blocks from where I'm staying). I'm sure it used to be millionaire's row, but a million wouldn't buy you a powder room in a lot of these places today. Much walking, VERY steep hills, good for the sole!

The Grateful Dead House....
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San Francisco Day 2-47-Edit by ramboorider1, on Flickr

....and it's wrought iron gate that keeps the riff raff (ie, any possible future Grateful Dead out:
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San Francisco Day 2-51-Edit by ramboorider1, on Flickr

The missing letter is intentional here:
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Ouch of Haight by ramboorider1, on Flickr

A bit more reflective of the city's CURRENT youth experience:
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This amazing front garden for this incredible mansion...
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San Francisco Day 2-201-Edit by ramboorider1, on Flickr

...is actually public land and part of the Lyon Street Steps:
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San Francisco Day 2-191-Edit by ramboorider1, on Flickr

As far as I could tell, this is actually an entrance to a private domicile - it looks like a grand hotel, but it's not...
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-Ray
 
Hey All,

Ray of this group number 5 is my fav although all are great.

i really want to comment on your processing. In my opinion...

I have in other threads expressed my love for ektachrome and as a result absolute love John's (entropic remnants sp?) processing. Well yours are ektachrome as well just not quite to the same degree as John's. My opinion has always been that ektachrome is the best colour black and white film there is. It preserves the best elements of black and white and adds colour. It don't get no better. Sharpness, and all the attributes of black and white - composition, texture, etc are there and highlighted - you are not overloaded with colour. Your images translate well between colour and B&W the mark of - in my opinion - the "right" stuff. No over reliance on colour and a willingness to expose any flaws - which B&W mercilessly does.

As the song goes...

"Mama please take my kodachrome away... ;)

Keep em coming...

-Ed-
 
Thanks for all the lovely images!
Looks so warm and nice over there!

I miss California and San Francisco so much!
I grew up in Pebble Beach, CA, so San Francisco was only a few hour drive away..
 
You guys have no idea what sunshine is. It was 81F in Miami yesterday. 60F is winter for us. However, Ray's shots are quite stellar. I hope to have something to share soon (waiting for my Henry's X-T1 pre-order to ship).
 
A fantastic series. My favorite are the first and last one of the first series! Great eye and processing.
Thank you for sharing the beauty and special-ness of SF with us.
 
Thanks for all the lovely images!
Looks so warm and nice over there!

I miss California and San Francisco so much!
I grew up in Pebble Beach, CA, so San Francisco was only a few hour drive away..

I actually played Pebble Beach once, back in the late '70s. Or I should say I walked around it with a bag of sticks once, flailed about, and got thoroughly played by IT! Longest day I've ever had on a golf course. Merciless topography! But so beautiful I almost didn't even mind the pain and embarrassment. I came to grips with my overwhelming limits as a golfer that day and pretty much gave it up sometime in the next couple if years.

I grew up in Arizona and lived in SW Colorado and the Seattle area before moving east 20+ years ago. I love the town I live in but winters like this one make me miss the west a LOT too! Nice to get a chance to visit - I had an airline ticket I had to use by March 8 or I was gonna lose it so I'm using it! And staying in a cheap but nice little basement studio I found on Air B&B, which has to be one of the best ideas anyone's had in a while...

-Ray
 
You guys have no idea what sunshine is. It was 81F in Miami yesterday. 60F is winter for us. However, Ray's shots are quite stellar. I hope to have something to share soon (waiting for my Henry's X-T1 pre-order to ship).
i'm getting a "no earlier than 15 march" from them. you?

(Sent from another Galaxy via Tapatalk.)
 
beautiful images Ray, but if you want subnshine next time come on south. to So Cal, depending upon how you like at we have had an amazing winter, no rain and temps up to the 80s. First real rain just showed up this past weekend.
 
San Francisco has had a lot of sunshine up until the last several days. I feel lucky we got that first day of brilliant sun. The last couple of days have alternated drizzle and cloudy. But still quite comfortable compared to what I left on the east coast. Here are a few from today. My daughter and I just did a couple of hours of walking and then she had to leave for the airport. But we made it to Chinatown and a couple of parks we hadn't been to before. All but one of these are all with the 23mm, a lens I'm really liking a LOT and is helping me get over my RX1 much more effectively than I'd expected. The last was shot with the Nikon Coolpix A, a camera I haven't pulled out much yet on this trip. I'll probably do a bit more street work with that in the next couple of days and will post them in the appropriate place on Serious Compacts, but this one is sort of an orphan at this point - so I'm gonna give it a foster home here for now...

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-Ray
 
Hey All,

Wonderful images.In this set no's 1 and 4 for me. Ray you get so much more colour and vibrance and sharpness to your images than I tend to. Could you speak to this a bit? What kind of workflow? How much is in camera settings? Is it all post?

-Ed-
 
Hey All,

Wonderful images.In this set no's 1 and 4 for me. Ray you get so much more colour and vibrance and sharpness to your images than I tend to. Could you speak to this a bit? What kind of workflow? How much is in camera settings? Is it all post?

-Ed-

Thanks Ed. It's pretty much post since I pretty much always shoot raw. The first day here, the sunny one, I mixed in some Velvia jpegs, but on the two subsequent days I think I've used the raw files pretty much exclusively. So any camera settings would be for naught. I play around a LITTLE bit in Lightroom, but rarely with color or sharpening - I usually just play a bit with the shadow and highlight sliders and sometimes add a touch of "clarity", but a little bit of that slider goes a long way, so I've gotten really careful about not over-doing it. But I think that one does use some combination of sharpening and saturation and contrast to do it's thing... And the rest is from Color Efex Pro (for color - Silver Efex Pro for B&W). I use a few different filters in various combinations as starting points and then tweak from there. Sometimes I barely do anything but add a border and maybe a touch of vignetting, but other times I use the detail extractor and various contrast related filters to get 'em where they look right to me. I don't usually spend more than a couple of minutes on a given shot, but that couple of minutes can make a big difference in how it turns out...

-Ray
 
Varied day today - started off damp in downtown doing some street shooting, where the XT1 acquitted itself well, as expected. Then streetcar over to the Wharf, in the sun, walked out to Fort Mason and then another bus up to the Golden Gate, as the clouds rolled back in. And finally a lunch of sublime pizza out on West California Street...

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San Francisco Day 4-59-Edit by ramboorider1, on Flickr

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Touched by ramboorider1, on Flickr

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Dress for Less by ramboorider1, on Flickr

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The Shadows by ramboorider1, on Flickr

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-Ray
 
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