The Fabulous Fox Theater on Peachtree Street

Sunday's Atlanta Streets Alive

It was a fun time on Sunday with the Atlanta Urban Photo Walkers at Atlanta Streets Alive on Peachtree Street. If you're not familiar with Streets Alive, I recommend keeping an eye out for it if you're in the Atlanta area. It's a lot of fun.

Streets Alive is a day when the street is blocked off to cars for several miles, and you can get out there on your bike, scooter, or your feet and hang out and walk without worrying about getting hit by a car (which is definitely a worry in the ATL!). It's a festive atmosphere with games, food, and fun. 

On Sunday, Peachtree Street was closed from Mitchell Street SW in downtown Atlanta all the way to 15th Street NE in Midtown. The Atlanta Urban Photo Walkers had a meetup and there were about 15 of us wandering the street getting photos. It was kind of hard to stay as a group and by the time we finished, there were only a few of us together, but we had a blast.

Of course, the one day without clouds out of the last couple of weeks was Sunday which was a little bit of a bummer and it made getting good photos challenging which isn't always a bad thing. Instead of getting big, beautiful clouds without worrying about blown-out areas of the photo, the sky was flat, blue, and bright. 

I played around a lot with getting the sun peeking out from buildings, which is hard to do because it's blinding and also because you have to be careful with your camera's sensor (not to mention your eyes). You don't want to point the camera right at the sun or you can ruin the sensor. I was trying to be careful but also trying to get the sun peeking out to capture that nice starburst of the sun's rays. 

This one of the Fox Theater was hard to get. When I stepped far enough back to get all the letters of the sign, the sun was blinding and the letters were partially blocked by the flags. If you want those nice rays, you need to stop your camera down to about f/8 to f/11 and then line the sun up so it's just peeking from behind the building. 

It was an exercise in frustration at the Fox but I did like this shot. The only thing I didn't like was the amount of lens flare - that's when you see those floating balls of colored light. I don't mind them a little but one of the spots was so big, I decided to get rid of most of it in Lightroom. 

The above photo was shot at f/11 with a shutter speed of 1/400th. I should have put my ISO at 100 but I had it at 200 because that's the optimum ISO for that camera and I didn't think to change it. I liked that I captured the image when the ad for Ringo Starr was on the marquee. I hate it when I get an ugly-looking ad. 

I'm going to work on these photos a little more and see if I have anything else I like from the day. I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to capture some bubbles near one of the booths where they had a bubble machine. That was a fail. I only got one or two shots with the bubbles in focus and I didn't like the backgrounds at all. 

It was a beautiful day and, although pretty hot, there was a nice breeze and some relief whenever we were walking in the shade. We stopped just short of Mitchell Street because some of the folks from our group had gone on ahead and when they passed us coming back, they said there was nothing going on down at the end. 

We took a turn by Woodruff Park and jumped on the street car and headed for home. It was a long day but a lot of fun.

I find shooting straight middle-of-the-day photos to be one of the most challenging, especially when there are no clouds and no texture to add depth to the sky. It was good for me to shoot on a day like that so I could work on my skills. 

If you're interested in Atlanta Streets Alive, the next one is October 22nd.

Have a great rest of your day and week, and see you between the raindrops!

xoxo,
Susan

PS - I don't have this photo of the Fox on the site yet but you can see other Atlanta photos on my site here. And a big thank you to those who buy my prints. I appreciate you so much:)