What I See in the Street

Not sure if I will ever make it to become a street photographer… I am so bashful to break the ice with strangers. It is a challenge for me to approach a stranger and ask for permission to take their photos. However, what’s happening and what’s displayed in the street seem so fascinating to me.

beautiful Portland waterfront

Street photography is mostly relating to people and their social content. If I just walk down the street, glance at people and keep going, I won’t have any emotional contact with them and they are no impact on me.  It is a completely different scenario when I have a camera in hand and people in the street are my subjects.

It was almost a ten hours walk in Portland downtown area.  Portland is the largest city in Oregon and the most representation of a mix of northwest casual, contemporary, cultural and particularly its unique fashion and lifestyle. Some said that Portland has fashion style of its own. For the most part, I tend to agree. Liberation and free spirit are definitely well pronounced here.  And, among everything else, it is a beautiful city.

travel High

Street photos strike me the most are the ones illustrating the reality, the grim part of life in the street. And, the unmeasurable resources of artistic talents, all sorts and for all purpose. As I am not very good to reach out people to shoot their portraits, I had my zoom lens with me in order that I can peek from distance.  It is also due to my previous job training, I tend to look at design aspect and looking for fine design mind. Speaking from creative prospect, I am also interested in lifestyle shots. What I mostly show here is the general lifestyle, something I found interesting, funny, informative or purely to get you to smile.

We took train to Portland and started our walk from Union Station.  Inside the lobby, I noticed this lady standing in the line in high heels, the casual wedge, but still, high. It is a bit to carry while traveling, not the casual Northwest style (sneakers, moccasins, backpacks) that I often see. But again, I have not travelled internationally for a while and I am too out of date.

This lady's outfit reminds me of layers in Photoshop. I am so dedicated to photography now that I did not first think about layers from wardrobe aspect, I thought about layers in photoshop! How much I have changed since I left fashion industry. I like how she has drapery look skirt going with contrast laced ruffles and down to the boots with echoed curve, and the boots on cobber stone sounds classic. Here is a typical street fashion style. Is my busy mind wandered too far?

Worked in fashion industry for more than a decade, I like to know what's trendy and what not, but I believe, key is to choose the styles best fit for yourself. It can make yourself a joke if you purely go by the trend. To me, I like to watch how people dress themselves because a person's outlook, in most of the case, well represents his/her personality.

In front of the large window with trendy orange red tassels, I think highlight of her hair color looks beautiful. I don't care for tattoos, but I actually think that subtle touch of dragon graphic pairs the curve of her hair. Beige demure dress with yellow dots balance the exotic portion of the look. And, cozy sunlight was lightly toasting her hair... My eyes were glued on her the moment when I saw her. She has a bike with orange and yellow stripes. She wore yellow bracelet and earrings....

Eugene has excellent bike path, along the river, too. In this May perfect temperature weather, biking is absolutely rejuvenating and same in Portland. Whenever I see people jogging or biking, I feel there is hope for the future. People want to be fit and are making efforts to remain physically fit.  When I was young, I rode bike to school because that was the only transportation tool besides bus.  My father rode bikes to wherever he wanted to go because there was no automobile affordable to middle class people then.

And now, bike becomes a trending exercise device, a cure to people who are usually sitting too much in the car or in front of the computer. Our future is for us to go back to the past, to paddle the simple wheels.

Back to the Past

Excessive meat consumption is not healthy and now we are going back to the basics, eat more grain for more fiber. Instead of juicy steaks, we are now yearning to have oatmeal and wheat bread with coarse fiber, originally poor folk's meal.

Iphone invention has changed the world and still dominating people's heart and mind in daily life. Couples do not stare at each other at a restaurant any more, they are busy looking at their phones.  I was sitting with a young and loving couple on the return train. They behaved like newly wed, but Iphones are surely something neither of them willing to completely surrender.

Texting while biking

Myself included, I would not go out of the door without my android phone. So is the guy in this image. How much longer do you think she would remain her patience till he is done with his texting?

I bet if we randomly walk into a store with customers and we will see at least 80% of them are looking at their phones.  I was in a coffee shop to rest my feet.  Two Spanish soccer teams were playing against each other.  Guys were cheering and yelling, then, there was usually a pause before another applause came back again. You know what the pause is about.... they are worshiping their phones.

Many talented musicians start their debut performance in the street. While I am writing now, I can imagine there are hundreds of them are now playing at New York Time Square and corners of Fifth Avenue off other side streets. In the past when I traveled to New York, I would rather walk down the streets to enjoy street talent shows than to dress up going to Broadway shows or museums.

passion

It is not hard to bring an old violin or guitar, find a traffic spot and start to play. But if the goal sets only the small changes from the pedestrians, it might not be as fun for the money collectors and neither the audience. Musical instrument does not produce pleasing music if the player does not have the persona like a true musician, like this guy pictured. He has that chiseled chin and bony face, long mustache and wrinkled hat, a resonate of an artist.

the Musician

Several years ago, a famous musician dressed like an everyday civilian and played his guitar at New York subway...People walked by, dropped the coins in his guitar case all day long, but nobody recognized this famed musician.

I had a good and fun job being the new product development manager for years. Fashion and market research being my imperative duty, I have spent lots of hours inside high end department stores, boutiques in posh district and branded shoe stores. The products I was in charge are men (mostly) and women's leather accessories. Men's leather goods trend is often first applied on shoes, then goes to belts. So I got into a habit to shop shoe stores. When I passed through the airports, I looked at men's belts and shoes. I also checked out women's shoes and handbags.

At Keen store, I was barely able to examine all the creative displayers there in a short twenty minute stop. Not only that they used Chevrolet rear fender as the back of the bench, the sitting area is the design of a keyboard. Chairs used to try on shoes are made from colored oil barrels. They also have ceiling high shoe displays operated by a turning wheel. Keen's shoes feature casual and sustainable. Industrial flare of all these metal merchandisers are perfect fit.

Chevrolet keyboard 

Such details may be nothing to street photographers, but meaningful to me. An innovative design mind is how we can enjoy so many choices of everything in our life today.

It is not by coincidence that I was drawn to shoot the lady with red hair above. It is her fashion statement caught my attention and she happened to stand in front of that store window decorated with fashion colors and details.

Traditional diners are often older or intentionally decorated like an old timer. There are plastic red and yellow bottles of ketchup and mustard on the table. Plastic water glass is dripping wet in and out. Waitress in short skirt and white socks came by immediately when you sit down, nostalgic, familiar, friendly and fast-paced.

Portland Penny Diner sign caught my eyes. It is contemporary, tidy and welcoming. One penny coin is fabricated with laurel section raised. Laurel makes me think of a winner. The coin is perpetually turning 360 degree that draws people's attention and also symbolizes of constant flow of the  clients. The sign makes me wanting to go in. I bet their table is clean and not sticky.

So much to discover in the street. Resources and talents are endless. I bet that I can walk down the street every day and discover new things every day.  Hopefully one day I will be more gutsy to ask people to take their pictures. I believe most people are happy to be photoed.  It is up to me to take that step.

Sunrise, Sunset, Surprise

Sunrise and sunset are prime time for photography. Light is soft and smooth. At this time of the year, sunrise is around 5:30am and sunset 8:30pm in our area.  I don’t usually get up that early for sunrise images unless I am on a photography retreat or on a vacation where we can have an ideal spot to view the scene. The dramatic rise and set of the sun from horizon happen in that five to ten minutes window. We need to have our camera gear more than ready to capture the dramatic moment. It is a luxury to be able in the right place at right time.

Morning Glory

This picture was taken early in the morning in the woods. The warm and fuzzy morning sun just began to embrace the earth and have us drowned in its glory.  In this shot, the sunlight was filtered through trees that created layers of monotone from white, gray to black. It looks to me that the trees were soaked with light and drunk in soothing pleasure.

In many cases, I was just passing through somewhere in the car. Camera is not accessible or it is ready but I am right in the middle of the freeway.  If I am fast enough to pull over at an exit, I may still get a shot if the location is open and angle of view is manageable. Sometimes, the sun was either up too high or disappeared from horizon by the time I found a place to stop.

The lesson taught me to just shoot regardless whenever an opportunity comes up and not to worry so much about photo quality.  If I don’t get a great shot, I at least have chance to examine the setting of my camera and learned from there what I can do better next time.  I am anxious to explore and to learn, but I know I cannot give myself too much pressure. I have to be carefree, take one step at a time.

On a trip back from a photography event, I was pleasantly tired and anxious to go home.  But when I spotted this post sunset sky, I was determined that I wanted to get off the next exit.  Luckily I was able to find a good angle for the shot, but it was pretty dark all around. I hand held my camera and bumped ISO up to 640 to shoot.  I could have raised ISO higher but I was concerned about the details of layers and colors.  I also did not remove electric pole and power lines as I always like them to be in the scene to be more realistic.

Sunset (Three Sisters are in the background)

I grew up in the city and now become a country folk. Believe or not, I have had very few experience taking trains. My first experience taking a train by myself was in Cologne, Germany at my 30’s. When I was young, I was gutsy. I did not speak German. I had not taken a train before by myself. I only had the address of a company that I planned to visit and talk business. I remember that I purchased a ticket and my seating was later claimed by the conductor that it is first class, and I had to pay him another $20 Dutch Mark (then about US$10).

On a trip to visit my daughter and grand children in Seattle, I took a train, my first experience (again) taking a train by myself in US. It was a 6:00am train. As I recall, sunrise was 6:42 am or so on that day. I found myself a seat on east side and started to figure out the settings. The train moved fast and the sky was dark, I definitely needed both shutter speed and ISO to accomplish the shot.  As sun started to shoot out its orange light from below the horizon, I started to shoot whenever I could find an open spot.

Train was moving and there were all kinds of barriers in front of my subject. I must have fired 30+ shots including when the sun was finally above horizon.  Most of the shots were very cluttered because of the various items existing within the distance, but I got couple OK shots. Because high ISO was used, some post processing to reduce the noise was necessary.  I was busy selecting better shots and reducing noise, and I did not realize that there were two suns hanging high in the sky, two of them. I was stunned and could not figure out why. My husband is the one, as usual, to come up the logic answer for me.

Sunrise

I was sitting inside the train by the window. Window is composed of two layers of glass panels. The sunlight was first hitting inside panel of the window in an angle (from high to low) and bounced back through outer panel of the glass (from low to high). My smart camera has caught both Suns, the reflected one was dimmer and higher than the real one.  Does this make any sense? You may have better answers. Please feel free to chime in.

I am not writing mystery fictions, I am unfolding mysteries in our nature.