How I Shoot It #2: Ultra Wide Urban Street Photograph

Hello all, today I want to share another photo for the "How I Shoot It" series that I started a few weeks ago. The first post of the series was posted on my other blog: bejo-photography.blogspot.co.id if you want to check it out. The purpose of this series is to share the techniques, settings, and all behind-the-scenes stuffs that were involved to create some of my photos in the series, so that you can implement those aspects in similar shots.
  
Today, the photo that I want to share is a street photograph of a lady crossing the street in Ginza, Tokyo. This was taken sometime in December 2014, which means I was already equipped with Micro Four Thirds gear and no longer shooting with Canon.
  

  
The concept of this picture is just a straight forward street photography in an urban setting, but with a little twist, so that it doesn't look similar to other street photographs. As people are used with 35mm or 50mm focal length for street photography, they are quickly becoming a cliche. So I used a 14mm equivalent focal length instead, which is more suited for landscape, and tried to come up with something new and original for this genre.
 

How Did I Shoot It?

Camera Setting

I shot this picture using my old trusty Olympus PEN E-PL6 that I already sold. The lens that I used was the Panasonic 7-14mm f/4.0. This was shot wide open at f/4.0, at the widest 7mm focal length (14mm equivalent), at ISO 200, on aperture priority. The camera chose 1/500sec for the shutter speed, as dictated by the metering system that I used at the time.
 
The metering mode was set to spot metering, right in the middle of the camera. So naturally, it metered at the lady wearing the red coat, which resulted in her being in the right exposure and everything else was slightly overexposed. FYI, I spot meter almost 100% of the time these days, it just works wonderfully for portrait, although it doesn't work as well in landscape.
 

Technique

As with any street photography, the most important thing to remember is to be at the exact right place just before the subject arrives. Choose your "backdrop" first, then wait for your "prey" to walk into your "backdrop".

For this photo, my "backdrop" is simply the Ginza road, stretching as long as my line of sight, and my "prey" is the lady wearing the red coat. I saw her walking from far away, and I was in the middle of the road when I saw her approaching and crossing the road. I quickly positioned myself at the center of the crosswalk right across from her, and waited until she walked right in the middle of her crosswalk.

The 7mm lens (14mm equivalent) is an important part of the image, as street photographs are usually shot at 35mm equivalent or 50mm equivalent. It really brings a lot of unique characters to the picture that you don't usually see in street photographs.

Keep in mind: with ultra-wide-angle(UWA) lens, you have to be very careful with how you position the camera. Any slight tilt will get exaggerated greatly on UWA, and keeping the vertical lines under control requires raising/lowering the camera to get them all as correct as possible. Depth of field is going to be very wide, even on larger aperture; it's the nature of UWA. Also, the foreground will always look large and the background will always look small with UWA due to its perspective distortion, so you have to compose the picture carefully. One more thing, you'll really have to be VERY close to your subject if you want your subject to fill the frame; not just close, but really at his/her personal space!
 
However, these problems shouldn't discourage you, because you can treat it to your advantage.
 
First, I tilted the camera just a little to look up from the hip level, so that the vertical lines start to tilt a little bit, just to artistically add some "surreal" feel to the picture, which I couldn't achieve if I was shooting all straight and distortion free.
 
Second, I need the wide depth of field to show the urban environment of the Ginza street, so that it can be more recognizable; if I blur the background, the element of the environment won't get too recognizable and I don't want that. This of course made separating the subject from the background more difficult, but that's when I was being pushed to become creative.
 
Third, I shot her close enough (5 meters approximately from the subject), but not that close because I want a lot of space around her. I could fill the frame with her and make her really stand out from the background, but I want her to almost become a part of the scene without under-powering her presence as a subject too much. I was pretty lucky because there was no one else on the scene that was on the same parallel-plane as her from where I stand. If there was someone else in the same distance from my camera to her in the frame, that person will stand-out too and it could ruin everything.

How To Improve?

The picture that I shot isn't exactly perfect as I had in mind. I had to crop, and even it wasn't enough; see the white umbrella on the lower-right of the frame? The lighting was pretty flat due to the cloudy day, and the sky wasn't interesting at the time. I would love to take this picture again under sunset/sunrise sky with just enough clouds to make the sky interesting.

The focal length that I chose was near ideal. I would love to try to use fish-eye sometimes to artistically add more interesting visual elements to the picture and further enhance the surreal-feel of the picture.

If I shot this with a 35mm equivalent lens, I could blur the background and make the subject stand out significantly, but I'll have to sacrifice the Ginza road stretching to the horizon, and turn it simply into a bokeh; it's simply not what I want.

Processing wise, I cropped the image slightly to center the subject right in the middle of the frame. I added just a hint of contrast, raised a bit of shadow to show more detail in the buildings and on the people, and lower a bit of highlight to expose for the sky, and add just a slight clarity to enhance some mid-tones in the picture. Honestly, it looks so much better in black and white, but I thought the red coat that the lady wore really needs to be shown in color, as it lose so much "power" in black and white.

That's all for this "How I Shoot It" post, I hope you find this post to be helpful for you. If you have any question or anything in mind, please comment below and I'll do my best to get back at you. Until next time, good luck and God bless you :)