B&W Street Photography in Southend-On-Sea

Firstly - I have a YouTube Video to accompany this shoot where you can see me actually taking the image. The video includes a POV and commentary. Check it out here. and don’t forget to subscribe to the channel as I post regular street photography videos with a whole bunch of insight and tips and tricks. + CHECK OUT … The Street Thief on INSTAGRAM.

a STICK OF ROCK

So I'm in Southend-On-Sea which is a place very close to my heart as I was born and raised on Canvey Island which is a few miles down the road. It’s one of those proper old English coastal towns that could have been lifted from a carry-on movie or one of them Donald McGill seaside postcards. When I think of Southend I think of Rossi’s ice cream, pink rock, candy-floss and those hot donuts which are pretty much heart attack food if you eat more than one but what you kind of can’t help yourself. It’s also rife with characters. This entire video pretty much takes place on the beach and the pier. Which by the way is the longest pleasure pier in the world and I’m not even kidding. Google it.

FUJI ACROS B&W PROFILE

I decided to challenge myself by shooting on the Black and White ACROS Fuji Profile. This profile renders a terrific finer detailed image which is all tied in to the X-Processor Pro engine.

This was a challenge for me me because I don’t see photography in that way. I don’t see the world in black and white and in fact, the decision to render an image in black and white for me mostly comes in post-production. Occasionally I’ll know when I’m taking the photograph that it’s going to be in B&W but mostly not. It could be said that the decision is made unconsciously before I take the photography, which makes sense, as flipping the image to black and white in post production is barely a choice.

I loved it. Especially on the beach here where there is so much landscape, wide-open space, negative space if you will. Being able to look thru the viewfinder and see instantly exactly how the image is going to look is a wonderful thing and I really dig the ACROS profile itself.

MINIMAL POST EDITING

The only changes I made in post were pretty much dialing down the sharpening here and there and I added some grain in the exposure photoshop plug-in. I wills say however; if you like grain in your image, dialling in the grain in camera is easily done I simply forgot to do it this time round. Other than those few tweaks in post the images you see here are pretty much straight out of the can.

I’m interested to know how you guys approach shooting in black and white? Do you prefer to view the image in the camera in black and white, i.e. the viewfinder and the LCD or not? What are your thoughts on the images I got here? I’m also shooting a whole bunch of these images on the 50mm equivalent, i.e. the FUJI 35mm F/1.4 and that is a first for me. I love to get in close but frankly, on the beach here, where it’s not too busy, it would possibly be a little inappropriate to be continually getting in as close as I might otherwise have liked to.

I’m happy with the images I got.