Vancouver Olympic Weekend

I traveled to Vancouver this past weekend to see my first Olympic event, courtesy of my brother in-law Felix who generously gave me two tickets to the Finland-Sweden hockey game. My friend Ronald decided to come with me and spend the day leading up to the game (a) trying the Olympic culinary offerings and (b) trying our hand at street photography.

A lot of these photographs will be of the same subjects since we spent the day walking around together, but here is a good way to see the difference between someone how has spent the last 8 months mastering photography (Ronald) and someone who hasn’t (me).

We both took pictures of this particular building wrapped with a giant ad:

I had a moment of “Why didn’t I frame it better?” when I saw Ronald’s posting, and I do remember that he took his time picking a spot for his shot. I think I was thinking of coffee.

I don’t have a picture in response to Ronald’s photo of our shadows, but I wish the shadows covered less of the maple leaf of my next shot. I cropped this shot heavily and boosted the color:

We also stumbled into a string of pop-up art galleries during an annual “Art Walk” in Vancouver. There were some art installations in the basement of one gallery and both of us turned into 10 year olds when we saw this on the wall:

Ronald’s pose was redolent of Lee Harvey Oswald… Maybe it’s just me.

I had problems adjusting the color on this next shot:

I wanted to preserve the nice red color of the painted brick wall, but the crowd inside was swathed with incandescent lighting. Another thing I have noticed is how careless I have been with the metering of some of my shots. This has resulted in less than sharp results in some of the shots I liked. Also, I was also surprised that I didn’t take multiple shots of scenes that I liked- to ensure that I tried different exposures/apertures to get the best starting point.

More to come as I process more.