London - Soho Street Scene

[mattp]

Thought I'd post this now as it is sort of a pair with my shot of Leicester Square.

Same camera, Yashica t4-Zoom, taken late in the evening when it was very dark and had just stopped raining. I was leaning up against a wall to try stay reasonably steady for the fairly long exposure.

The shot is taken on Windmill Street, just away from the bright lights and theatre-going crowds of Shaftesbury Avenue. It is a pretty seedy part of Soho, evidenced by the building in the centre, the Windmill strip club. The fact that the neon letters "..ill" weren't working seemed quite suggestive, almost as if the owners didn't want to associate with the word!

The image is scanned, so detail is lost (the letters particularly look far softer on screen than on my print). I suppose I was going for the mood more than anything though, so I hope you get the idea.

As always, thanks for taking the time to look.

[chnewsarum]

I like it !

[Dzerzhinski46]

Dear mattp,

I like the shot. Very contrasty, which works for this shot I think. By the way, what kind of film did you use?

Dzerzhinski

[Steph_B]

There is a nice wet look to it. I am still struggling with the perspective though. I wish I could see a bigger version of it.

What kind of film do you use BTW. I have been advised to use Delta 400 for winter street scenes. Would you concur?

Cheers,

Steph.

[mattp]

Thanks for the comments.

At the moment I just use the basic Ilford XP2 Super 400. As I'm very much a beginner, and I'm only using a compact camera, I wasn't sure if there was any justification, or if I'd see any different results, in using a more 'professional' film. Because of the costs I tend to end up getting each roll developed as 5x7 prints, and if there are any I like at all (normally about 1 or two in a roll if I'm lucky!) I scan them and print enlargements digitally. As the scanned images can look quite messy, there is a bit of tidying up involved. Also, if I'm not too happy with the choices the processor has made with my prints, I may play with bightness and contrast until what's on the screen looks closer to what I was hoping for.

I suppose that's cheating in a sense, although I justify it to myself as being the modern equivalent to experimenting in your own darkroom. Because of the cost I'd like to move into digital as soon as I've got some spare cash. At the moment the cost of processing means I'm reluctant to take as many photos as I'd like, and if I don't keep taking lots of photos, I'll never improve!

matt

[92135011]

Besides the barrel distortion that can be a little distracting (surreal)
it looks great