Night Street Food

jpope42

If you've spent time in Beijing, you've probably been here. The night food market is an unbelievably rich experience of food you've never thought of as food. My favorite...scorpion on a stick!

Richard

It's not a bad crowd scene, but the combination of tilt and selective color makes the result too gimmicky for my taste. I'd love to see a straight B&W and level version if you have one.

michswiss

The "Workers Stadium" sign in the background tells me where I am. I've spent a lot of time in this area. Our offices were close to there. I agree with Richard in terms of the processing. There's some nice linearity of the food stalls, but the tilt and selective colour take me out of the setting. What's funny is the guy in the lower left with the video camera seems to think you're just as interesting.

PhotoDavid78

wanfuxing street has some crazy eats. I like how the workers are blured because they truly work fast and hard in those little booths.

jpope42

Thanks, I must have forgotten this is the Street & PJ forum, not the photoshop wackiness forum. Anyway, here's the b&w version. It's tilted because I held the camera overhead and shot, and after 3 fried scorpians and one snake on a stick my aim was a little off. Yes, one of my favorite parts of this is the guy with the video camera. He probably doesn't see too many 6'4" dudes holding cameras overhead at te market (or maybe he does, it's kinda touristy). I also added one of my favorite shots from my second trip to Beijing in 2002. I always liked it because it's so real, a backstreet neighborhood store.

rainbow

B & W is much better -- now my eyes are drawn to the woman with the food and the guy with the video camera and the rest adds a nice context with the market and the crowds.

coldclimb

Had myself a starfish when I was there. Scorpion would have been cool though!

Richard

That's better. The repetitive pattern makes the lanterns stand out without the need for selective color.

Juano

I agree with all. BW is much, much better and I really like your second shot

Yetishot

I dont understand why so many people dislike selective color. I think the first one is great. You can see the lur of the workers much better and it makes the photo much more interesting

jpope42

Thanks for the comment. IMO, each has a place. Selective color, in my limited experience, is always a controversial way of processing an image. I think it can be a little heavy handed. I originally did this as a part of an art project a couple of years ago. The storyline with multiple images for that probably made more sense (at least in my head!) for this image in its selective color mode than it would as a single image in a forum that is rooted in the real world such as this forum. What's interesting to me is that it seems to work (I think anyway) in both. I do think the b&w depicts the reality of the scene better, while the selective color went with the story better.