I often think of this quote from Alan Schaller when I’m out hunting for street photos: “If you can get the magic trio of a good subject, good environment, and good light all together in one frame, you’re winning.”
If I can find a spot where I’ve got two of the three, or am close to getting them, I’ll stay there and try to get the third. On a recent trip into West Oakland, that’s the situation I was in. I had noticed a brightly colored wall near where I was headed, which was exceptionally vivid because it was front-lit at that time of day—meaning I had two of the three. Now I needed a subject.
I saw this cyclist coming and used him as the subject. But it was so bright out that I couldn’t get a slow-enough shutter speed to blur him as much as I wanted.
I waited, and saw this couple approaching; I placed them in the black spot on the wall, and did a fair amount of clean-up and processing to simplify the image.
There was a white car parked in front of another section of the wall. I really would have preferred no car at all, but taking it out was too much of a change. So, I turned it blue, which I thought worked better than white.
I tried a few other compositions with the wall before I had to leave. But I go by this wall often (on the way to drop off film at a lab), so I expect to take advantage of it again. It’s not that easy to find even two of the three elements in the magic trio together, but now I know a spot where I can reliably find two.
