Three card trick

Whilst camera phones are great for serendipitous moments, if you have a real camera ready to roll, then so much the better. I was taking photographs on the Southbank, when I came across this three card trick guy in front of Tate Modern. He was taking money from the tourists. I could see his plant, but not his look outs.
I shot this on the fully auto setting, into the sun, but in RAW. The original picture is ISO 400, 1/500th, F10. Fortunately I was able to take the original picture which was heavily shadowed by the early afternoon sun

and make something better of it. Note the shadows indicating the sun in front, which is always challenging.. Compositionwise, there is a triangle of attention between the gamer, his three boxes and the guy in the striped T shirt. Other members of the audience are suggested by their shadows. Strangely enough, everyone ignored me, as most of the time these guys do not like their picture taken. I tried this in Malta, and the locals definitely did not like it.

Black and white in Brixton

I found myself in Brixton Market, which is a wonderful place to take photographs. The stallholders must be quite used to it by now. The intent here was to take a picture of a rather dramatic fishmonger and meat shop. One of the assistants insisted in being in the picture. When I got to look at the picture afterwards, the assistant suddenly became the main feature. I decided to convert to monochrome because the original had some strange colours, which were possibly down to the lighting, and I could not correct for, and the mix of colours did not leave me with a feeling of satisfaction.. As I had shot in RAW, the conversion was problem free.The original jpeg is below. At least the fish look more like fish.

This was shot with a Canon G12 on the auto setting which produced F4 at ISO 80 at 1/80th. I am guessing that the exposure was calculated for the white coat and the fish at the front. A good case for manual control and bracketing, but the monochrome outcome was good for me. I am increasingly using monochrome conversions from RAW.