Fiddling LUTs With "Seven"

I came across "Seven" in Washington Square Park the other day... a blistering torrid heat wave was passing though New York City, but she seemed to remain very cool and composed under her black frilly umbrella.

I asked if she would wait in the park until I brought my cameras...she gracefully acquiesced, and in a figurative blink of an eye, I was back with the Fuji X-Pro2/18mm and the GFX50R/50mm. I thought I had seen before on University Place, off the Park...perhaps 3 months ago, and complimented her on how she pretty she looked. 

As "Seven" was expecting a friend, I had to work very quickly and the photo session took no longer than 10-12 minutes. I used an array of actions while post processing -including LUTs- as the sun was out in full force, resulting in portions of the images being over exposed. 

Revisiting "The E.K. Session" And Pushing The Envelope

On a recent summer day, I met EK in Washington Square Park and arranged with her to pose for me a few days later in a small nearby outdoor space.

In contrast to the fashion photo films I like producing, it was a brief photo session with no rigid structure to it. Notwithstanding, we both enjoyed the experience and EK was a delight to work with.

I chose to re-process some of the results using one of my cinematic LUTs (Look Up Table) which are presets within my post processing software to convert and change color values, saturation, contrast, luminance and hue of these photographs. This time, I chose a combination that would accentuate and pop up the richness of EK's dark skin tones. I pushed the envelope in terms of saturation and contrast, but I am singularly pleased of the results. 

I added a slideshow with the original non-LUT photographs at the end of this post.

Revisiting The "Nymph" With A Cinematic Grading

With international travel still extremely impractical (at least to those countries that I'm photographically interested in), I've started revisiting my photographs made in some of these countries, and started to work on a street fashion photo session in Hanoi's old section. 

Using ON1 post processing software and a modified LUT present to achieve a cinematic effect, I worked on the photographs of Zhang Mansi, a Chinese student from Dali in Yunnan. I had met her and her friends in one of the streets bordering Hoan Kiem Lake, and asked if she would pose for my camera (a Fuji XT-1 at that time) in the old section of the Vietnamese capital. She was studying Vietnamese and political science, and has since returned to her home town. I was in Hanoi in connection with the launch of my photo book "Hầu Đồng: The Spirit Mediums of Viet Nam", and had taken to the streets for some respite from the local TV appearances and photo talks at various venues in the capital. 

From my cursory viewing of Twitter accounts, I gather Japanese photographers are especially fond of color grading their images in the blue-orange tone that emits a cinematic "feel". I also found from experimentation that this color grading looks best on blacks and dark photographs.

The Offbeat Characters of Washington Square Park

I've been going to Washington Square Park two or three times a week for a few months already; especially at the end of the week, to observe and photograph what has become a visual cornucopia of scenes in a human theater...captivating circus performances by characters that I can only describe as 'offbeat'. Some of them are truly creative, while others perhaps not as much...but taken as a whole, provide wonderful entertainment to the thousands of hard-to-impress New Yorkers and gawking tourists alike.

So here's the first slideshow of these interesting characters which I've photographed. A photo editing software was used to isolate them from the background, so as to remove any distractions. 

Click on the controls to view the slides.