Day 26: Urban photography

It seems a bit redundant going out shooting urban life when most of my previous challenges incorporated an urban theme. On a second thought, this was an aesthetic I subconsciously chose to convey through my pictures. Have I started picking up a certain style?

At the end of the day, I wasn’t going to argue the pros, especially since this was something I enjoyed doing!

Freezing as it was, I grab my widest lens and set off in my neighborhood to find something of interesting to shoot. I’ve done a lot of street side photography lately, so this time, I wanted to capture the architecture.

I came to realize Canonbury, my neighborhood is one of the most beautiful areas in London. The small rural-style streets, the Victorian houses with big gardens and driveways, the quiet and plenty of parks, all create this sense that you’re outside of London. And I came to appreciate this more and more during the last 5 years that I live here.

I captured these houses many times before. They remind me of those famous ‘Painted Ladies’’ in San Francisco at Alamo Square Park. My old pictures looked quite flat, so I wanted to mix things up this time.

I looked for different angles and compositions to help me build a more interesting frame. I looked across the road and there is this public staircase leading to a block of flats. I climbed up there and got behind a plant decorating the staircase. I wanted to add depth to my photo and its leaves seemed the perfect opportunity!

Since it was a sunny day, I used a higher shutter speed of 1:1200. I kept my depth of field to f/5 and my ISO to 200. Overall, I’m very happy with my photo and it’s certainly a step up from the previous.