The Other Story in Street Photography - Nashville Week Three
Saturday afternoon, 2:30 pm, off I go to Nashville to shoot street photography, as promised. It takes me about 1/2 hour to get into the city. I always park in the same place, which is Public Square Parking. There are four levels, but in the pandemic times I can always park on the first level, which makes me feel safer. Feeling safe is always a bit of a personal battle.
I then walk the pleasant little street that takes me to Broadway. It is a nice warm up exercise. There are a manageable number of people out. I am for the most part shooting in uniform light shade during that time of the day. It certainly makes it easier to get consistent exposures.
When I turn onto Broadway, at about 3:25 pm I have to walk into the sun. That is not working all that well for me. However, as I have mentioned, the interesting part of Broadway is just a few blocks, so before long, I am turning around and walking with the sun behind me. Either direction I am dealing with some great contrasts of light and dark. One revelation, this week, is that I will have to make b&w images. I had it in my mind that I would be taking color photos on Broadway. Color is a lot of the charm of the street and the people. Apparently, though, the heightened contrast of shadows and light is going to be part of the composition, so I need to make the most of it, at least some of the time. I believe that is Street Photography 101. We will attribute my slow realization to being out of touch with my camera for 6 months.
Every bar has at least one gate keeper. They are often handsome fellows who are stationed outside to help push traffic inside. This fellow seems kind of daunting. I thought the way the light hit him was interesting. The shadows of the people on the street were an unexpected plus.
In trying to get better compositional control of the relatively wide angle shots, I took some number of practice shots. My friend, Neil Lawner, last week suggested I walk on the outside of the sidewalk. I was probably doing that, but the point, I think, was to take shots angled in to avoid including the messy street scene. That worked. I think there is a physics principle going on. Angling in shortens the effective angle of a wide angle lens. When I was taking pictures “straight on” it was shocking to me how much more got into the frame.
With my camera angled in, I get all sidewalk and no street.
I also worked on taking pictures of the pedal taverns, party busses, horse and carriages, and even party fire trucks, which are more plentiful than I remember in the normal times. I think what happened was the Nashville mayor closed down bars but not “motorized bars”. It was not his finest hour in decision making, for many reasons, but bar owners are American entrepreneurs and they quickly got themselves motorized bars. If nothing else, they provide great advertising opportunities. As a side note, I have not completely figured out how to take interesting pictures of these moving venues. I am using my lifetime approach of “tacking” toward a solution, trying to make each picture get a little closer to what I want.
What drew me here was the “two-fer”. The pedal tavern and a horse and carriage were traveling down the street together. This is clearly a case of n-1. I needed for them to be much closer to me. The problem was that the pedal tavern was rapidly overtaking the horse and carriage and I could not wait any longer to take the picture.
For sure, the interaction of people on the street with the motorized bars is interesting. This is also an n-1 picture. Sometimes the people in the bars are standing up and clearly having a good time. Not so much this time.
This is my favorite of the group. It is taken with a 28 mm focal length and not cropped at all. At this moment, it is the #1 Party Bike.