Notice I didn't say "on the Seine" although it felt cold enough. No, the Seine flowed north to the sea unperturbed by the cold, churned up by loaded gravel barges going down stream hooting at the returning empties.
Strolling along the left bank on a brisk November day, it was fairly quiet. The used booksellers, the ones that were open, huddled in lawn chairs wrapped up to ward off the damp cold. The sun was still shining yet everyone was walking with purpose, hands thrust in overcoat pockets heading to a place where they could warm their bones.
I had made a few desultory images, more just to get into the rhythm than anything else. As I walked further upstream, past the Pont de Sully, by the Quai St. Bernard there were a three young gentleman working on their tricks: the video guy, the coach and the skater. I watched for about 10 minutes and motioned to ask if I could photograph them.
As luck would have it, I only had the Leica which doesn't autofocus. So, reaching back into the recesses of the archive I dusted off the old "f8 and be there" mantra. Several test shots to gauge distance and "Bob's your auntie." I made several good images once I got things dialed in.
The thing with f8 is that you have quite a large depth of field so you get the subject in focus but also a lot of the back and fore-ground. But, technology to the rescue! The latest version of LR has an experimental Lens Blur function. This stunning piece software that analyzes the image and calculates a pseudo depth of field that you can then adjust. Works a treat and I've used it on several images.
I went with a grainy high contrast black and white style:
After the shoot, in broken schoolboy French (on my part), non-existent English (on their part), and hand signals (on all our parts) I managed to get an email address for one of them so I could send them the images. I did several other treatments for fun but the images above are my favourite.
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