[Zig]

Aw..no, not really!
I'm really not very good with oudoor people shots using a 50mm, though I still hold to it being an excellent portrait lens, and on full-farme too that is. I really like it wider, is my excuse; that and seeming to get the 50 to "go" better for female portraits than male ones what with that lovely halation(or naff softening if you wish to be needlessly cruel) at f1.4.
Anyway.
This lovely chap is a city treasure, rightly deferred to when the "Buskers' Union" allocates its pitches, and he gets prime place right outside the abbey just as it's getting busier.
He always has a crowd around him, so I never have chance to frame up properly and chat with him, yet I throw in a generous clinky coin or two which I consider fair exchange for a few moments grovelling around in the dust and pretending to look like a pro.
This gentleman has a grand talent for fiddle-playing, yet he generates remarkable interest because he has a foot-powered machine that plays some kind of zither-type instrument: he presses the treadle, the machinery rotates and I'm assuming a roll of punched card enages the zuideco-style backing. He's a personable and smiling chap, the tourists love him and I consider him to be one of the unsung heroes of the southwest. That'll be the wild wild southwest, thar. I photographed him once before, a couple of years ago, and was blessed with a scorcher. These are just captures, though I do hope they present him in a complimentary yet interesting manner.
My biggest mistake was to keep my polariser on, though I did roll it t the "off" position. I chose the widest apertures I could without going girlie-soft, that is, f1.8 and f2.

[blue]

The pyramid shape is quite classic - very fitting

[Toad]

Great series - it feels like I can sense quite a bit about this man, and his fascinating device from your description - I can almost hear it.

I really like the expression on the fiddler's face in #2 - so calm and beatific. I can see why he gets a prime busking position assigned. THe depth of field in the last 2 is quite extraordinary. Can you provide any technical info about those?

Great story and vignette of life.

[Zig]

Ta blue: jolly glad to have you aboard, by the way!
Thank you Toad, that's very encouraging. A bit stumped on the technical info side, as there's not a great deal: as I say, all 3 were with the Canon 50/1.4 and I went for f1.8 and f2 in the above shots at ISO100. As usual with this sort of focal length, the effective depth of field narrows, the closer one is to the subject(er, you know what I mean, I can't be bothered to choose my words correctly!) I didn't go to full-on f1.4 really because the halation would be inappropriate for the subject..yet didn't want to get too small an aperture as to put too much detail in the peripheries. Funnily enough, I wanted a sense of motion from the flywheel but needed to do this via bokeh rather than a slower shutter speed...I didn't have the time or confidence to think too much about the shutter. As it was, you know how these performers are: a circle of attention forms around them from about 12 feet away and I'm always conscious of "entering the territory" unsolicited. I'd find it easier snapping a solo street addict or Big Issue seller to be honest, as I'd get a feel and conversation going first...and when the begging hand can emerge is when I think it's reasonable to offer a quid pro quo in terms of being a photographer's subject for a minute or so.
There's nothing technical in the processing either: a fairly standard conversion into colour first, then into BWStudio with a layering-in of a warm tone curve I have as a pre-set(these are ARC files I think??). I added a touch of smart-sharpen on another duplicated layer, then erased the top layer apart from the chap himself so as not to jaggify the bokeh.
BWStudio I find very useful(and cheap!), to my mind a lot more sense(and less processing power for my old 3.2 Athlon 64 with its 2GB of PC3200 RAM) than Nik's Silver FX. It works best if converting the tiff to CMYK from RGB, then dithering down later.
Sorry Toad, a lot of waffle for little substance here but I hope some is useful.

[Toad]

No that's good info, Zig. Nice to see you using a 50 - which has become my current favorite focal length by a sizeable margin. The 50 always makes a photo feel like you are there - probably because the field of view of a 50 (on full frame) approximates a natural perspective.

[matthew]

I like the last image in particular - the woman looking back adds a lot to the story.