LBC & DTLA

Southern California is a huge sprawling expanse of land.  It's not really built up to be concentrated in one area, but rather spread out in small pockets.  I took the opportunity to show two cities that are nearby, but quite different from each other.

Portrait

I shot this at the Grand Central Market in Downtown Los Angeles.  It was in front of the counter at a spice market booth.  I wanted to try and capture part of the eclectic culture of Southern California.  For the shot, I used a 50mm prime lens at f 1.8, ISO 200, 1/80 sec on a crop censor camera to create a shallow depth of field.  I tried to do a different take on bokeh.  I liked how the jars in the foreground are blurred differently from the background of the in focus subject.  For post processing, I used lightroom and played with contrast, dark, and shadow highlights to help bring out more detail in the subject.

Motion Blur

I was inspired by Trashhand for this one and took it at the Metro station in Downtown Los Angeles.  It was just before 5:00 pm, so there wasn't a huge rush hour crowd yet.  I like that I was able to get the train lights in the shot to give a sense of the start point.  I used a wide angle fisheye lens on a crop censor camera.  10mm, f 16, ISO 100, 1.6 sec. I was hand holding it, so I leaned against a wall to try to keep it as still as possible.  I was playing with exposure metering on this one because I was afraid the amount of light that was going to come in.  In lightroom, I tried to pop the contrast on the yellow and blue stripes.

The Lookup

This was taken in Downtown Los Angeles.  There aren't a lot of tall buildings downtown, but luckily they all have different and interesting architecture.  10mm, f 3.5, ISO 100, 1/100 sec.  I took this into lightroom to bump the clarity and detail, then I loaded into the VSCO app and used the Hypebeast 2 filter.

The Nightshot

This shot was taken in Downtown Long Beach at one of the bus stations.  24mm, f 2.8, ISO 640, 1/40 sec.  I like this shot because it's a night shot that combines a panning motion shot with a candid portrait.  The lights from the station lit the driver's face enough to produce a clean image.  I really enjoyed trying to match the vehicle speeds on panning shots to see what I could achieve.  I used lightroom to clean up some of the noise and perform some white balance correction.

Conclusion

Before this project, it had been years since I had picked up my DSLR and started shooting.  It definitely re-ignited my passion and I had a lot of fun with it.  Watching Trashhand's videos and listening to his shot selection and editing thought process was certainly eye opening as I have no theory background on photography.  I continue to search for these 4 shot types throughout the city and plan on more and more photo walks.  I would appreciate any and all feedback.  Thanks for looking!