This one is a bit of a departure for me, but something I've been planning to do for a while. This is the first of a small series of shots taken in downtown San Francisco. My two goals were to produce a set of black and white images using a wide angle to get this 'closed in' feel. Street photography, for me, produces work which has too many elements. As a fan of simplicity my only option is to avoid as much 'clutter' as possible, and that means pointing the camera up.
Technically this isn't as perfect as I'd like. A slightly smaller aperture would have worked better, but handheld under fading afternoon light made this difficult.
In PS, I did a channels conversion (140/-20/-20) to B&W. After resizing for posting, I applied unsharp mask at 50/1/4.0. Finally a black border seemed to suit the image better than my standard white one.
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This is a really nice shot. Im not sure if you were going for the whole grain thing or not but especially in the upper right corner its really noisy. Neatimage will do wonders removing unwanted grain. 7.
It does create the feeling of being closed in. I don't know if the border enhances the mood or distracts. I don't like it. You might have gotten more of a feeling of unease if you had used a mismatched border. One that is somewhat wider on the sides, the thickest part being 1/5 to 1/3 the thickness of the current border. But that's a personal observation.
I enjoyed your photo, and title, too. The border detracts from it though. The photo itself conveys your idea without the heavy border. Great composition!
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