The Empty Coffee Cup...

Day Three: As complete a contrast as possible to yesterday's blip from London, both in focal length and prosperity, here is what we all dread - and avoid.

Literally shooting off the hip with my super-wide Sigma 14mm f2.8 on the full-frame D700, giving a DX equivalent of just 9mm, and AF, it is quite easy to get candid wide shots in the bottlenecked streets of retail London, here near Centrepoint. All shots though, perhaps including this one, were just messy mixtures of too much, or too little and difficult to find a clear centre of interest.

In the end, black and white just didn't work, far too contrasty and not enough tonal detail in the shadows. My limited editing options on my friend's PC didn't help either. So, it remains in colour, upped a bit, the pink trousers contrasting with the palour of the beggar, who I monochromised, to make him colourless, invisible...I also liked the relative triviality of the advertising he is leaning against - he will need a lot of coins in that take-away cup to go and see the show for himself...

Cropping too - where to do you start? So, I didn't.

Warts and all, a technically challenging shot but one I wanted to try and really don't get much chance in my usual locations.