French Maid - Tokyo style

[Manfred M]

We spent some time in the Akihabara (Electric Town) part of Tokyo. On top of the various stores flogging electronics, video games, manga books, etc, there were "girls" dressed up in "French Maid" costumes pushing brochures into people's hands trying to get them into the French Maid style cafes (I can only imagine what they are)...

This is an off-the-hip shot I took walking down the street.

[Donald]

Mmmm!

Good street pic. 'Interesting' subject!

[Manfred M]

Some subjects are more fun to try to get than others.

The shot is a bit misleading as there are very few people in the shot. Tokyo (especially the Akihabara part of town) is super crowded, so isolating this woman and sign was quite challenging. What I find absolutely amazing is that there are some 33 million people in the Greater Tokyo area. This is the same number of people that live in Canada...

[Shadowman]

Nicely captured.

[IzzieK]

The poster beside the woman-pretending to be a schoolgirl is too much of a giveaway. Nice shot...it is easy to see what and who the subject is...

[William W]

Nice Hipshot Manfred! I like it.

I appreciate the effort to get the appropriate framing and perspective.

I think the square crop, finishes it nicely.

Lens? something around 35mm (on 135 format)?

[Manfred M]

Nice Hipshot Manfred! I like it.

I appreciate the effort to get the appropriate framing and perspective.

I think the square crop, finishes it nicely.

Lens? something around 35mm (on 135 format)?

Thanks Bill. Shot at 18mm on 35mm format.

[William W]

wow! that's really good! Wider than what I thought, I was guessing 24 to 35. Nicely controlled. Did you crop it much?

[Manfred M]

wow! that's really good! Wider than what I thought, I was guessing 24 to 35. Nicely controlled. Did you crop it much?

Bill, this is the SOOC jpeg, so as you can see, I did crop a bit off the sides and a fair bit off the top and bottom. I tend to use a decent margin all round to give myself a bit of a factor of safety when I shoot off the hip, but nothing really drastic.




I bit of straightening out the verticals and a bit of dodging the subject. That's really all I did on this shot.

[RBSinTo]

Manfred,
Nice shot.
I especially like the sign face image that mirrors the costume and hair of the young girl.
My only suggestion would be to crop horizontally at the point where the wheeled base meets the body of the sign (closest to the girl), to eliminate a bit of foreground clutter that adds nothing to the shot.
Robert

[Manfred M]

Manfred,
Nice shot.
I especially like the sign face image that mirrors the costume and hair of the young girl.
My only suggestion would be to crop horizontally at the point where the wheeled base meets the body of the sign (closest to the girl), to eliminate a bit of foreground clutter that adds nothing to the shot.
Robert

Robert - I suggest you look at the original image at the top of this thread, rather than the SOOC shot that I posted to address Bill's question on the amount of crop I used.

[RBSinTo]

Robert - I suggest you look at the original image at the top of this thread, rather than the SOOC shot that I posted to address Bill's question on the amount of crop I used.

Manfred,
I was writing my comment when you posted the original, uncropped shot (comment #9 in the thread).
My comment is based on the photo you first posted in the thread.
Robert

[John 2]

That's interesting, and different, and ever so slightly bizarre but an excellent spur of the moment capture. If I may ask, it was just that, a Café?

[Manfred M]

That's interesting, and different, and ever so slightly bizarre but an excellent spur of the moment capture. If I may ask, it was just that, a Café?

No idea, John. I didn't go to the cafe itself, I was just walking along a nearby street,