Hanging around

Hanging around, originally uploaded by andiwolfe.

This is a street photo I took while in South Africa October 2, 2010. I was on an excursion to Cape Point with Dennis and Gigi Laidler. Trent Bosch and his family were in Cape Town after the AWSA symposium and the Laidlers were taking them to see the sights around the Cape Peninsula on this lovely Saturday morning.

I was in the back seat of a Land Rover when we rolled up to a stop light. This young man was hanging out, watching the traffic roll by whilst casually eating an apple.

The photo was a bit underexposed and so I did a faux HDR treatment, bringing the exposure up by a stop or more and then stacking the two photos together to process in a Nik Software plug-in: HDR Efex Pro. I had not used this software before, but really enjoyed exploring all of the settings. This is my rendition of that captured moment in time.

I like the square crop on this image. The subject is positioned well for looking into the street, and seems totally at ease with the world. The taxi cab stopped in the frame of the glass door, stating where the photo was taken - Fish Hoek. The red phone box draws the eye into the center of the frame and the pedestrian crossing sign completes that line.

The processing gives the image a feel of being a watercolor. Digital photography has so much leeway for digital darkroom processing, which appeals to me. I don't think every photographic image needs to "look" like a photograph.