Back to Basics: Santa Monica Pier Ver 2.0

I've been taking a Street Photography class through PCC Extension for the past few weeks and I wanted to show some of my work from our assignments. I hadn't taken a formal class since high school, so has renewed my curiosity and challenged me to do better. Taking this class has helped me realized that had been so dependent on post-processing. Over the years I no longer take the time to actually think about taking the picture in the moment. I always admired film photographers because they only had one chance, one moment, one shot. The most they could do is fix exposure or crop (and some were even too pro to do that!). Why should we spend so much time editing photos when the time should be spent actually taking a good one that doesn't need to be fixed?

In our class, the professor spends most of the class talking about how lazy photographers are, and how they don't exercise their craft and I realized that he's right! It takes a lot of work! This set below took about 2 hours of waiting, walking, meandering, and waiting for, as Captain Jack Sparrow would put it, "the opportune moment."  Even then, I think I was the first one to leave out of our class because I'm such a slacker. Oh well. Hope you enjoy!

By the way, we're only allowed to shoot in manual, black and white, and without cropping.

I have to choose 3 of these photos to submit during the next session, which ones would you vote for?? Thanks!

This man looked so melancholy, but at the same time, it seemed like such a sweet moment

He didn't win

This girl is going to be super competitive when she gets older

In the arcade

This man apparently fought in WWII, shot down 21 German planes and took captive Hitler's personal photographer

A fellow classmate

A little irony

Camping out in the dark

This lady was so joyful feeding the pigeons