A light in a dark alley

New Journal 23 – In NYC

Rain was falling heavily on the streets of New York that morning. We were moving quickly towards a Harlem subway station with all of our bags. The next task would be to find a luggage storage place near Times Square. We were drenched and hungry but once we could offload our bags we’d be able to grab some food and start exploring New York.

In Times Square the rain came down again, even heavier than before. To make things worse, we suddenly realised we’d left our passports in the hotel in Harlem that we’d just checked out of. We had to go back.

9 hours later we were standing with glasses of wine at a photography exhibition by the very talented group of inner-city kids who attended and graduated from the Salt program.

It was an interesting day in which I replaced my jeans with a hole in the crotch, met our host for the next 4 days, an Irishman called Seamus, and was even recognised by someone as we left a shop. An Indonesian photographer, Ahmad, came up to me and said ‘Are you Jimmy McIntyre?’ After introductions we sat in the park briefly and chatted. As it turned out, the exhibition we were due to visit that night, which we had no idea how to get to, was only a block away from his house.

He generously gave us directions. We said goodbye with a promise to meet on Saturday night with any other local photographers and off we went.

Yesterday was an interesting start to our US trip. Hopefully the adventure will continue, but without the rain!

Today’s Photo – The Alleyway

As you can see in the before image, the light throughout the scene is fairly even. However, the charm of the scene, in my opinion, is the light cast by the various street lights and in the shadows of doors and places that also have a story to tell. By using the Darken/Lighten Centre filter in Nik Color Efex, I brightened the end of the alley while darkening everywhere else. Then I mask out that layer on the street light to the left so that it retained enough brightness to catch the eye.

This shift in the balance of light drastically changed the mood of the image.

Before the Joys of Post-Processing