I’ve mentioned before that it is very rare for me to intentionally take photos with people in them, and I will often go out of my way to avoid such situations. In fact, I have only two photographs in my photo library that include people in them, and this is one of them. (You can see the other one here.) It’s not that I dislike pictures of people (think street photography); it’s just not something I’ve ever been inclined to do, especially on any kind of regular basis.
But, occasionally, I will come something that catches my photographic curiosity in which the people are an important part of the scene, and I feel compelled to take advantage of the opportunity. That was certainly the case with this image that I captured while on a trip to San Antonio, Texas, a few years ago.
I had gone to San Antonia to attend a work-related conference. Although I had brought my camera equipment with me, there was little time for photography during the day. But, the evenings were a different story, and I made sure to never leave my hotel room without my camera and 24-105mm lens. After all, I never knew what fantastic opportunities awaited me just around the next corner, and I wanted to be ready for them.
I was fortunate enough that my hotel was located on the famous San Antonio River Walk. The River Walk is a series of walkways that run along the banks of the San Antonio River as it makes it way through the city of San Antonio and is home to numerous bars, restaurants, and shops.
On our last night, a couple of coworkers and I were eating at a restaurant on the River Walk. As we ate and chatted, I kept looking around me to see if there was anything that might spark my interest. Suddenly, I noticed another restaurant just below us on the opposite side of the river. The outdoor tables were covered with white tablecloths with red napkins on them. I liked the contrasting colors and took several shots of those tables.
Then I noticed the couple sitting at one of the tables. They were near another group of people standing nearby, but they seemed completely wrapped up in their own conversation and unaware of the larger group only a few short feet away. When I saw this, I immediately thought of something that might be the subject of a Norman Rockwell painting and decided, before I ever pressed the shutter button, that was what I do.
In order to achieve the look of a painting, I processed the image in Lightroom as I normally would. I then opened the image in Photoshop and used the Topaz Labs’ plug-in Simplify 4. By using the watercolor preset and then making a few adjustments to the settings, I was able to create exactly the image I had envisioned.