Triple Header

That’s me on the left, shooting “from the hip” or without looking at the screen on my iCamera. This takes some practice, but opens up a world of possibilities. It also allows me to be more aware of my surroundings and alert to developing scenes while shooting candid street photos.

While enjoying my morning coffee at my favorite sidewalk table, near my Airbnb in the Recoleta neighborhood of Buenos Aires, Argentina, I caught a series of images of the scene inside the cafe as well as the reflections in the window of myself and the ever present yellow and black BA taxis.

Opening it in the free Google app, Snapseed, I adjusted the perspective, cropped the image, switched over to Maple Labs’ Retouch app, to remove some minor distractions, then back to Snapseed, where I added the text to create a possible new header for my website. (Above)

Then, I returned to the pre-text version and used the crop tool to create the three photographs seen here:

A bit more fine tuning in Snapseed, and I’m a happy camper, or as the Brits would have it, Bob’s your uncle.

I actually did a little more to the image above that I will tell about in another post. Spoiler alert, it has something to do with an iPhone 12 Pro Max. By the way, I’m especially pleased with the way this one turned out.

i

This was shot on an iPhone 6s Plus in November, 2006, during one of my winters in beautiful Buenos Aires, a street shooter’s paradise, and I’m still having fun playing with it.

Hipshot to Crop

Taking a snapshot, making photographs...

Here’s a shot I took with my iPhone held down by my side as I was walking near Parque Central in Antigua, Guatemala:

Not so great, right? But, with a little help from the Snapseed app on my iPad Pro,

Simply by rotating, cropping, and fine tuning, I was able to make these four stand alone photographs:

For me, the fun part of street photography is catching people doing what they normally do. People being people. Not for me the posed, the set up, the studio shot. Nothing inherently wrong with that way of working, it’s just that I prefer shooting candidly, spontaneously, intuitively, as unobtrusively as possible.

The second great pleasure I derive from street shooting is combing through all those random snapshots, looking for and creating finished photographs like these.

Oh, wait! I almost forgot. There was also this nifty little found still life in the image (I added Snapseed’s Vintage filter, something I rarely do.

I also like taking the shot I should know better, technically, than to take. But that’s a story for another day.

I hope you enjoyed this little peek behind the scenes, and I hope you will think twice before deleting your “failed” shots.

Hasta Luego

I've moved...

In August, 2010, I started a daily photo blog, whenapaintersnaps.wordpress.com. That ran until October 2013. It featured photographs taken with a variety of digital cameras of the time.

In March, 2015, I began posting iPhone photos on my daily painting auction blog, afarnsworthaday.com, which ran from July 2010 through May 2018. (returning soon)

Then, in April, 2016, I found my way on to Instagram, @johnfarnsworthphotographer, and I'm still there, with no end in sight. I find Instagram inspiring, encouraging, and a great place to make new friends in the photographic community.

So why this new When a Painter Snaps blog?

• Because I want to share more of my thoughts, mainly about photography, sometimes, maybe other things as well, especially travel.

• Because I want to play around more often with extreme image shapes.

• Because, having been interviewed recently (See DianeWehr.com) I want to occasionally interview others.

• Because I want to discuss, in depth, photographs and/or photographers that inspire me.

• Because I want to share some of my own methods and ways of working.

• Because I want to begin Vlog posting on occasion.

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