Grayscale Photography – Page 2 – Eric's Photography Blog

Three “Portraits”

Eric Ahrendt August 16, 2025 No Comments

All three of these are portraits, more or less. The first is an environmental portrait of a fellow photographer at the seashore in Pacific Grove. Clearly a portrait, but he’s relatively small in the frame. This was taken with my medium-format film camera. This is a street portrait of two women selling cosmetics at an outdoor market in Jack London Square. Nice smiles—and I didn’t ask them not to smile, as I often do. Taken with my 35mm film camera. Here’s a portrait of, well, not a person, but a statue. The contrast between the white statue and the dark background was so good, I wanted to capture it on film. My personal preference is for environmental portraits; I’m not

R-Evolution Statue at Night

Eric Ahrendt July 28, 2025 No Comments

More than once, I’ve photographed the R-Evolution statue on the Embarcadero in front of the Ferry Building during the day. It’s a striking work of public art. I read that it’s illuminated at night, so I went into San Francisco on Saturday night well before nightfall to see what it looks like after dark. I took this photo just after 8 p.m (as you can see from the Ferry Building clock), which was about a half-hour before sunset. As the sky got darker, around 8:30, the colored lights shining on the statue became visible. The lights in the Ferry Building also came on. At 8:45, we were deeper into the blue hour, and the colors on the statue were more

Skipping the Parade

Eric Ahrendt July 4, 2025 No Comments

I’ve photographed the Pride Parade in San Francisco many times, so I skipped it this year. But late in the afternoon, I decided to go into the city to do some street photography. The parade was long over, and most of the crowd was gone. I wandered around City Center with my film camera and asked a few promising portrait subjects if I could take their photo. No one said no. This was the second photo of the day, and is my favorite. The light was good at that hour, about 5 p.m., and the overall mood on Market St. was relaxed—not semi-manic like it gets during the parade. I think it shows in people’s poses. Another couple on Market

Unposed Portraits

Eric Ahrendt June 27, 2025 No Comments

I like to photograph my granddaughters, but asking them to pose is almost always a mistake. They’re too young to understand the concept of posing, so the posed portraits I get aren’t what I’m looking for. My family was at a cabin recently where there was a covered porch with good light and a plain background. I decided to invite my older granddaughter onto the porch to take her photo. But instead of asking her to pose, I just engaged her in a conversation about her classmates and her summer plans. Very quickly, she was focused on what she was telling me, and was paying no attention to my taking photos. The unposed portraits I got are much better than

Recent Street Portraiture

Eric Ahrendt May 6, 2025 No Comments

I don’t take a lot of street portraits, so accumulating enough for a post takes some time. Here are several recent ones, all shot on film. This is Mateo, who commented on my camera, and we talked photography for a few minutes. I placed him in front of this plain background. I found him a couple of weeks later and gave him a print. I talked with Alicia Taylor Low of Down to Earth Mosaics, https://downtoearthmosaics.com, at a Montclair Art Walk, and asked if I could take her picture next to her mosaics. Also sent her the file afterwards. This is Louis, who struck up a conversation with me when he saw me taking photos. He had a unique look,

SF Street Photography on Film

Eric Ahrendt February 25, 2025 No Comments

Because I’m shooting film much more than digital of late, I took my film camera into San Francisco a week ago and took photos at a Chinatown street fair, on Market Street, and around Yerba Buena Center. It was a different experience from shooting digital, mainly because, unlike with digital, there’s no immediate feedback: I had no idea whether I’d gotten a good shot or not. I only found out several days later when I got my negatives back. In a way, not having an LCD is a benefit: You’re not spending time reviewing your photos, and don’t leave the moment to do so. I was walking down Grant Street when Miss Chinatown suddenly appeared and was surrounded by admirers.

Choosing Limitations

Eric Ahrendt January 24, 2025 No Comments

When I decided to take my film camera to the “We Fight Back” march in San Francisco on January 19 in San Francisco, I got to experience the limitations photojournalists faced back in the film era. No autofocus. No auto exposure. One focal length at a time with primes. No burst mode. No SD card that holds thousands of photos—instead, you get maybe two rolls’ worth of shots, which, in my case, meant 72 photos. But I started out with one roll about half-used, so I didn’t even get that many. Despite all those limitations, I liked the experience. Every shot required a new set of decisions—including whether or not to take the shot at all. I had to constantly

Two Cameras, Two Looks

Eric Ahrendt January 3, 2025 No Comments

Because I want to end up with silver gelatin, black-and-white prints that I do myself in the darkroom, I’ve begun shooting film alongside digital when I do a portrait session. I used both cameras when I photographed a friend recently at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Getting images that are in sharp focus and properly exposed is a no-brainer with my state-of-the-art Fujifilm camera. That’s not to hype the camera, in fact, almost the opposite. It’s no challenge to get a technically spot-on image with that camera, and, frankly, that deprives one of some of the satisfaction. You still have to pose the subject, find a good composition, get a good expression, pay attention to the lighting,