Marseilles

After living with my shots from our Europe trip for quite a while, I'm going through the typical process of getting a bit tired of some of the shots that I initially liked and also starting to see some value in some of the shots I'd initially rejected.

One of the things that's become clear is that Barcelona and Marseilles were my favorite of the cities we visited on the cruise portion of our trip (not counting some of the little seaside towns, which were really lovely). Because I was too jetlagged and exhausted to really appreciate Barcelona this trip (I spent about a week there 30 years ago), and because I took very few photographs there, this is about Marseille.

Florence and Rome and Venice are such overwhelming tourist destinations that its very easy to forget that you're in a real, honest to goodness functioning city because you're so overwhelmed by the huge throngs of other tourists. You can walk the backstreets and get away from the throngs to some extent in those places, but the the main parts of the city are pretty over-run and that colors the whole experience (not that I can complain, being part of the problem). Not so in Marseilles - its a real functioning, bustling city, built on a very human scale, with an actual pulse of its own. The relatively few tourists blend in pretty well and the infrastructure has not been totally given over to making it easier for tourists to spend money there. It feels very real and I felt lucky to be able to just mostly blend in and observe, rather than becoming the story myself, along with all of my fellow tourists.

I shot a lot in Marseilles and I'm enjoying these shots more and more, as some of the others fade from view. Some are people, some are places and things - all are pretty much micro scale - no big sweeping views. None of the images are individual standouts (my best people shots don't even begin to approach the level of art that a few of you seem to manage somewhat regularly!), but taken together they give me a good feel for a place I really liked and would love to get back to someday. As usual, one of my favorites is quite out of focus and it doesn't work at all in this case, but I included it anyway. There are other pictures from Marseille that were in my original set from Europe and I don't repeat those here, even though some of them were probably better photographs. This could go in the travel area, but since they're all in B&W, I'm putting them up here.

Thanks much for your indulgence.

-Ray

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Thanks Jeff. I get a fair number of compliments on my B&W processing, but I frankly almost feel like I'm cheating, its so easy. I do everything in Aperture 3. Shortly after getting the program a few months ago, I found a bunch of B&W film presets that I imported into the program. They basically simulate particular types of old B&W film on particular settings. Like "Ilford Delta 400 ISO" or "Kodak Tri-X 400 ISO Pushed 2" or "Diane Arbus High Contrast" or "Kodak HIE IR Film" and even "Kodak HIE IR Film Handled Badly"! I think I paid $6 for one set of them and found the others for free. I probably have about 40 or so, which is overkill - I generally end up using one of about 10 that I choose from most of the time. So, when I want to convert a shot, I start applying these presets to it and generally one or two will really catch my eye as being most appropriate for that particular image. It usually takes about a minute to narrow it down to one or two and then I'll save a version using each of the presets I think work best, which is often just one and occasionally two. And then I'll tweak a few settings, usually highlights, shadows, high contrast, mid contrast, sometimes the color filter sliders. I very rarely spend more than 5 minutes on a photograph, usually much less.

So, its very easy. It comes down to instinct in terms of what looks best rather than any particular technical tricks or knowledge. After spending too much of my misspent youth in dark rooms working on exposures that were pretty close to finished product by the time you started the printing process, with only minor tweaks available to you at that point, having all of these 'after the fact' adjustments and even film types available to play with on any raw exposure just feels too easy. But jeez, its FUN! I feel like a kid in a candy shop.

If interested, there are a whole lot more B&W shots (as well as a few color) in a photo book I just put together for my own entertainment - I mentioned it and provide a link here:

https://www.mu-43.com/f60/photo-book-last-europe-i-promise-5355/#post48724

-Ray