Lo-Fi Alcatraz – San Francisco, California

I mentioned yesterday, at the start of my Alcatraz coverage, that the weather was quit dismal on our visit. Though perhaps not as dismal as these photos seem to suggest. It was cold, damp and foggy. I took an optimistic perspective on the weather, claiming that the foggy and rainy conditions matched the dismal nature of a maximum security prison located on a big rock in the middle of a San Francisco bay.

You’ll probably agree that if I had excellent weather, the resulting pictures would merely look like any other tourist snapshot. Instead, I got these incredibly lo-fi (low fidelity) images that looked like it was shot on a Holga with some ancient expired film. Nope. These were actually with the Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark II and my convenient 14-150mm travel zoom. The photos were so low contrast, with 300mm worth of fog in between, that I truly had to torture the pixels to get any kind of contrast.

The photos are pretty sharp actually, especially considering the 150mm focal length on this lens is not exactly stellar. But, the lo-fi nature is really caused by the weather and extreme post processing. And, while I post processed to get decent contrast, I did not simulate the old-timey look. The extensive vignetting and grainy texture was a bonus, I got for free.