The streets in Chinatown in San Francisco are crowded during the Flower Fair, which takes place the weekend before Chinese New Year.

That makes it hard to get a clean composition. I got only a few semi-keepers from a couple of hundred photos, and even for those, I thought there was too much going on in the frame.

So for three of these street shots, I kept the subject in color and made the rest of the photo monochrome.

In this one, I had to keep the pink background to go with the pink shirt and glasses.

There’s never a lack of subjects in San Francisco, and during events, people just accept that there will be photographers taking their photo. But grab shots, which the first three portraits are, never seem to work out as well as collaborating with someone.