London - Covent Garden & Carnaby Street

[mattp]

I'd appreciate any thoughts or comments on the photos below. They are part of my continuing efforts with street shots to try and capture something of the feel of living in London.

The first was taken in Covent Garden. There was a brief flash of sun shining through the fire escape on the buiding which initially caught my eye. Although I don't like to try and make photos look gritty or urban just for the sake of it, I tried to balance this with the wino drinking beer with his three pigeon companions. I'm not sure whether the lean on the white portico reflects his drunken state, or just looks distracting!



The second shot is actually just off 'swinging' Carnaby Street, but at the moment I can't remember the name of the street. I liked the graphic of the shop, and what looked like a boyfriend patiently playing with his mobile as he waited for his other half to stop spending her money. I'm not sure if it has any merit now, but when I'm old and grey maybe it will at least have some period charm!



Any thoughts are welcome, and Happy New year everyone.

matt

[readingr]

I like the bottom photo a lot. I know exactly how he feels and sympathise with him. I also like the character of the shop front. I personally would have tried to cropped it a little tighter on the left and right just to see how that works so that you loose the drain pipe and the extra doorways - not sure if it would work just a suggestion.

I like the top photo and adding the person gives a scale to the picture. The lean of the building can be corrected and if you look closely then all the buildings have that lean. So perhaps it needs a little correction. I never realised the chap was drinking and never got that impression from the photo, I thought he may be feeding the birds.

[mattp]

thanks for the reply Roger (as this was creeping down the page I'd decided I must have scored a complete dud!). I'll try the crop as you suggest and see if it improves things.

With the top photo I'm not sure about that lean - I cropped on the right along the edge of the building, but if you look closely it starts to appear at the top of frame as it was leaning in a little. To me that suggests that the lean of the white portico has something to do with converging verticals, which probably isn't surprising as this was taken at 28mm wide-angle to get as much height in as possible.

matt

[Chunk]

I like the jarring contrast between the utilitarian design of the fire escape and the elegant design of the portico.

I agree with Roger on the second shot having way too musch unneeded info in it. Only about half the picture area contains the very interesting subject. The edges have a lot of eyecatching details that we want to look at but don't contribute to the shot. I think you should have zoomed in or taken a few steps to get it framed something like this.

[readingr]

Much Better