This shot sort of popped out at me while shooting some waterfowl along the Taehwa River in Ulsan. Some times you just have to turn around and look the other way to find a decent show. for this one, the aspects of what I wanted came to me instantly. I wanted the lines to reach someone walking or on a bike and I wanted it gritty and with a lot of contrast.

The Shot: This is your typical colour street-style shot. Colour is hard to come by is amateur street photography as a lot of people use black and white to bring out the contrast and give it that “time magazine/in the field reporter” look. I was going to that here but look at it. The Rust and the chipped yellow lines would be gone.

The shot was actually more challenging to get then you would think. Basically, you get this idea when you WATCH the shot you want go flying by and you wait for the next perfect moment to come. It doesn’t happen that often. So you basically wait for the person to walk past and hope that there is no traffic in the way. This is not as easy as it seems.

The Post-Processing: This was basically fairly simple use of a adjustment layer and some blending options. I adjusted the levels to where I wanted them and used the smart sharpen tool to bring out the detail. It still wasn’t gritty enough. So I created a new adjustment layer (found under the layers palette ) and chose “black and white” From there I chose the neutral density filter. This is going to make everything black and white, so how do you blend them. On the top of the layers palette you will see the opacity and fill sliders, also you will see the word “normal” Click that and find the blend that works for you. I believe I chose “overlay” for this one but there were several that would have worked nicely.

The Final Product: What you are left with when you are finished is a gritty shot of daily life in Korea. Nothing special but the magic of this shot comes from the composition and the post-processing.