On the Streets: Capitol Hill

This winter hasn’t been as bad as last year’s, but I’m ready for a little spring in the Pacific Northwest. I promised myself after last winter that I’d get out into the wintry mountains. I haven’t done it yet.

I headed out for a walk yesterday, indecisively looking for dinner options. I settled on Sugar Hill, a small Thai street food place I’ve wanted to try for a while. I had the Khao Soi, and it was really good. It was a few dollars more than I like to spend on eating out, but I justified the cost by having skipped lunch. I asked for tofu instead of chicken. The broth wasn’t vegetarian, but that’s ok for me.

I took some photos before and after. The lighting was challenging, especially since I’m trying to get better at managing the highlights and shadows. Well, not necessarily managing them, but being aware of them. I don’t get too concerned about losing data in the highlights and shadows for casual street photos, but with digital I want to get more familiar with the adage about exposing for highlights and developing for the shadows.

I also fooled around with Fujifilm’s bracketing feature, which allows for an HDR merge in Lightroom. In theory bracketing should make it easier to handle the highlights and shadows. I think it’s a useful tool, but I don’t think going the HDR route is a silver bullet. In many cases I think something looks off with HDR images. They often strike me as fake, with too much added vibrancy and saturation. These are all on the X100T. I love that camera.