The Manager


August 16th 2021
The Manager

DowntownManagerBW

So lately I’ve been trying harder and harder to really reach out and talk to more people that I find interesting in hopes that it will make my photography better.  I also like the pressure of taking a portrait of someone you just met.  So I was walking along 16th street on one of my downtown walkabouts, and I saw this old guy.  He was great.  In the middle of 16th street he was hanging out in a nice suit, and his hat.  I loved his hat. There was this bright yellow stripe around a really well cut hat.  I decided after passing him once that if i saw him again I was going to strike up a conversation, and actually get his portrait.  So as I was coming back down 16th street I saw him again and went for it.

Seeing as how the nuggets were going through the playoffs I went wit

h with “So you think the nuggets are going to win?”  Which hooked the 2 guys that were there and they instantly started talking about why and how the nuggets were going to win or loose.  This really allowed me to start talking to him and get a different feeling for him.  Now I’m not going to say that it was all great, but he was a character for sure.

Here’s why this guy was such a character.  He had this amazing ability to get himself all riled up.  Meaning he would start talking about a subject, and then he would start getting really fired up.  I mean really fired up.  We started talking about jazz, which I feel like I know enough about to at least not sound like a complete goofball.  So he started going off about Ella Fitzgerald and how she was the best jazz singer ever, and all this stuff.  He started talking to me like I was arguing with him.  When I didn’t really say anything.  It was the funniest thing to watch and listen to.

DowntownManagerCrossX

He also had an interesting back story.  Apparently he managed all the workers on 16th street for over 20 years.  He knows them all, and while I was sitting there talking to him plenty of people came up just to shake his hand and say hey.  I can’t imagine all the things he must have seen while working along the mall for that long.

As far as the 2 shots go, they were both taken with my D700, and my 85mm cream machine pretty wide open, probably at about f3.2.  I love that lens so so much.  The first shot was a straight up BW conversion done in lightroom and I really punched the contrast.  The second shot is processed obviously a lot more.  I started off with some color fill layers to change the color of the shadows and work on giving it a more vintage look.  After that I did a gradient fill layer with purple and green, so that I could get a more cross processed look.

-Dave