Street Photography Moody Lighting

[jomvr]

Hi everyone,

I'm pretty new to photography but I've always been an avid viewer of fashion and street art. I recently picked up a Nikon D60 and a 1.8f 50mm lens from my friend and I've been walking around the city just shooting and trying to strengthen my fundamentals (composition, lighting etc.).

I haven't really used anything to edit my photos except VSCO and I'm in the midst of getting light room. I was just wondering what kind of editing or lighting do these photographers use to create this moody city style and does this type of style have a specific name? I'll post some the IG examples below, thanks!

Instagram
Instagram

 

[sashbar]

Why not sending an email to Jayscale and ask him what post production/filters is he using if any? He seems to be quite open. He may not provide you with all the details but at least give you some idea. Many of his images look desaturated, he may have his own colour scheme presets and batch-processes his images for a consistent look. Or he may be using some plugins. It does look cool and urban, but there are different ways to achieve this look.

As for the moody lighting, it starts with actual lighting of the scene, you need to learn to see the natural light which is not easy. If the lighting is bad during the shooting, improving it in post production/editing is impossible/not worth the effort in most cases.

You may read Chasing the Light by Ibarionex Perello. This is not about this particular style, but will give you a lot of ideas about the fundamentals of using the natural light in urban photography.

 

[jomvr]

Wow! Thank you so much for the reply, I will definitely shoot him an e-mail and check out that book.

This maybe a question for a different topic but do you or anyone else recommend any good books on urban/street photography?

 

[sashbar]

Wow! Thank you so much for the reply, I will definitely shoot him an e-mail and check out that book.

This maybe a question for a different topic but do you or anyone else recommend any good books on urban/street photography?

I have four or five books on street photography of which The Street Photography Manual by David Gibson is probably the most instrumental, but it does not dig deep, is aimed at complete beginners and presents street photography as a genre in a rather shallow way in my opinion. I was a bit disappointed.
Other books, like Street Photography Now or The New Street Photography Manifesto are even less helpful in my view, more of a photo albums with some short texts that I did not find really helpful. This is a very broad genre that is not easy to present in one book.

There are some good street photography sites with some excellent images that are worth browsing and studying, such as Urban Picnic:

Featured Street Photography Street Photography

 

[yellow ant]

This video can really help to start to understand how to use natural and flash lighting on the streets to create moody effects Digital Photography One on One: Episode 59: Inverse Square Law

 

[Derrel]

Instagram, the software application, offers 19 basic filter effects/presets, many of which are basically slight veiling or de-saturating filter effects, although there are others that tend to boost contrast and "juice" the image, like Lo-Fi does. In newer version of Instagram, there are multiple additional enhancement controls. Instagram offers a number of simple masking effects, which emphasize different areas of an image when overlayed, and you can click through and literally see if an effect is a good fit for a particular photo, or if it's not a good fit. Lightroom comes with somewhat similar presets, and there are also many,many aftermarket Lightroom presets available.

I would encourage you to look into the Lightroom presets, and how they can be used, or modified, and re-named. Many times a specific preset can be used to great effect as long as the source photos are roughly similar in nature; this is WHY Lightroom presents are used by so many skilled workers. Lindsay Adler has a nice segment on one of Scott Kelby's videos where she goes through how she modifies, re-names, and saves presets, and her work is simply amazing.

 

[W.Y.Photo]

If you are interested in street photography its best to look at a lot of photographers doing it. There are a lot more doers in that feild than there are teachers.. A lot of the elements of photojournalism apply to street photography but I'd say your best bet is to look at photos and watch some documentaries on street photographers.

I highly recommend This Documentary:

Here are some other good videos to check out:





Hell, while I'm at it here's a playlist of 53 more videos:
Street Photography Playlist

 

[Torus34]

Step 1. If the day's brightly sunlit, put the camera away and take in a good movie.
Step 2. Overcast day? Pick up your camera and go walkabout.
Step 3. Foggy? Grab the rig and head for those spots you thought would be improved by atmospheric perspective.

 

[Yelfiika]

Instagram, the software application, offers 19 basic filter effects/presets, many of which are basically slight veiling or de-saturating filter effects, although there are others that tend to boost contrast and "juice" the image, like Lo-Fi does. In newer version of Instagram, there are multiple additional enhancement controls. Instagram offers a number of simple masking effects, which emphasize different areas of an image when overlayed, and you can click through and literally see if an effect is a good fit for a particular photo, or if it's not a good fit. Lightroom comes with somewhat similar presets, and there are also many,many aftermarket Lightroom presets available.

I would encourage you to look into the Lightroom presets, and how they can be used, or modified, and re-named. Many times a specific preset can be used to great effect as long as the source photos are roughly similar in nature; this is WHY Lightroom presents are used by so many skilled workers. Lindsay Adler has a nice segment on one of Scott Kelby's videos where she goes through how she modifies, re-names, and saves presets, and her work is simply amazing.

I didn't know about the presets, but this information will help me, I sure. Usually I use photo collage maker Photo Collage Maker - best photo collage software for Windows, to make different effect and funny pictures, collages, now I will try the new knowledge about Instagram and compare functions.