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Friday Slide Show: Working Bikes Share This on LinkedIn   Share This on Google   Tweet This   Forward This

27 April 2018

We'd just borrowed a couple of books from the Mechanics' Institute and, on our way out, stopped in the lobby. We could either pack the books or our camera in our camera bag. Something would have to be hand carried.

Among the difficult decisions we have had to make in our long life, this one was easy. Hand carry the camera. You can take pictures.

And we didn't have to wait long to find one. As soon as we left the stately old building on Post St. there was a scattering of cardboard boxes guarded by a bike.

You may remember what a fan of bikes we are.

The die cast, we wandered around a few blocks taking shots of the various bikes that were tethered to the various bike stands downtown.

These days the bikes have to share the road with electric scooters (which, by law, should be ridden on the street, never the sidewalk). Even some of the bikes sport an electric boost now.

Hand carry the camera. You can take pictures.

But we were charmed to see the vast majority of the bikes (a count impervious to any Electoral Collegiate perversion) were old 10-speeds, their handlebars worn, their seats somehow pristine, tires replaced and still road worthy. Working bikes, that is.

Ridden by couriers to deliver stuff. Or workers shuffling between offices. No time for sidewalk showboating, they fly on the wind from Point A to Point B, all business.

We worked fast before our public transportation transfer timed out.

But once again the fun was in the editing this morning. That started with optimizing the exposure using a preset as a starting point and then kicking up the Clarity and adjusting the Shadows and Highlights in Lightroom.

Then we spent some time cropping. We had a lot of decisions to make. How tight. Whether to straighten. Whether to correct perspective. How about including those strong shadows?

That's the fun stuff, really. It isn't life-or-death. It's just playing around with the options. You try it. If you don't like it, don't cry about it, just Undo. But wait. Maybe it's leading you in a different direction.

A couple of these actually led us to monochrome versions. We don't usually mix color and monochrome in one show. But they insisted. So we relented.

And, you know, they were right. The color was a distraction. The monochrome version told the story.

And stories they told. One after another.

We could have listened all afternoon. But we had a bus to catch.


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