There's a skateboard park under the arts centre at London's South Bank. In recognition of its artistic quality, graffiti is allowed within the skateboard park area but not outside it. I've posted a few examples of the better graffiti on my Flickr photostream
for those that are interested. I thought I'd post here three shots I took the other day.
All shot with a 70-300mm f4-5.6 IS USM lens on a Canon 40D. Post-processing: tweaked fill light, highlights, and shadow in Picasa. Also tweaked sharpness and saturation in some cases. Saved at 85% quality in the Gimp.
Click the picture to go to the Flickr page where you can see the large version.
Skateboarder
1/40 sec @ f/5, ISO 800, Av mode, fl:170mm, partial metering, no flash
The Canon 40D seems to excel at getting this type of shot without having to use a flash. Because of its low noise characteristics, I was able to take this at f/5 (the widest aperture at that zoom setting, for background blur) for 1/40 second (for motion blur), at 800 ISO.
What Fresh Hell Is This
1/80 sec @ f/4, ISO 400, Av mode, fl:70mm, partial metering, no flash
The graffiti in the skateboard park is constantly changing. You go there one day and find something new then a day or so later it's been covered over by something else. Now and again someone paints something that just blows away the competition. Here's one such. I was lucky to catch it before too much of it had been overpainted.
Teenage Hell
1/30 sec @ f/4.5, ISO 800, Av mode, fl:110mm, partial metering, no flash
Some teenagers sit around chatting in the skateboard park. To the right of the picture you can see the graffiti pictured in the previous photo. I love the light quality you get in there when the sun shines outside.
I welcome comments, constructive criticism, and suggestions for improvement. Thanks.
