The street at night. A return to digital.

Its been 3 months since my last post.

Time flies.

I guess I've been busy. In second thoughts, i have been busy.


Film, lots of film.

Shooting, developing, scanning.

Ive been on holiday to Turkey. Originally, a pack light on camera gear occasion but in the end it involved two camera bodies, a light meter and a bag of different films to play with.

I need to blog about my film exploits and i will, i just need to get round to it.


As always, i shoot when ever the opportunity arises. I make opportunities a photography opportunity.
There's always a camera in my pocket, bag or car at all times.
Thats the beauty of smaller camera systems.

Being a multi manufacturer owner, it can take are a while to get round to using different equipment but they all have their uses and their time.
Client work is generally shot on my 'big' canons with their big lenses, although the Fuji's sit in the bag screaming to be used. On accessions I've thrown the wide angle adapter on the X100T and have shot some of my favourite portraits with it.

My Fuji's are my 'go to' if I'm travelling and for any occasion that i think "I'm gonna take my camera" and as i put above, i take a camera everywhere so it does mean that i shoot Fujifilm the majority of the time.

Having a couple of months of full on film shooting, I've not used a digital camera much. My heart just wasn't in it. I'd lost my motivation and inspiration. Shooting film was my excuse to just shoot, because you never know, i might mess the developing up and not get anything out of it, so why worry.
Its been a buzz. Like when i 1st got interested in photography. Some things worked, some things didn't.


The X100T is a great camera but eventually I'm always drawn back to the X-pro 1. It's a classic. Such a pretty box of wires. It works for me, the buttons are where i want them to be.

Ive not always got time to visit the city. I'm a village boy. I have to make do with whats around me, so i need to make it a new challenge every time. Challenge is good, challenge is motivating. Motivation means i pick my camera up.

Win!

So night time street photography is this blog's challenge.

High ISO, large apertures, shallow DOF.

More deleters than keepers but why bother keeping the photos that are not good enough anyway. They'll just sit on your hard drive and gather dust. I've started deleting images i know i will never use again, or those images where i once liked both of them but now a fresh set of eyes can see that one really is the better. Plus, i shoot raw, i could always edit it differently.


Its good to offload this photography blabbering, to share my (probably not) wisdom and judgement.



Night 1. A Thursday night.
The slow to focus but sharp as 35mm F1.4.
When i look at these images and compare them to the night 2 images i relise i must make the effort to use it more. In the dark, you have no chance to focus quickly, off the cuff style and so i need to be more covert when this lens is attached.
The slightly longer focal length gives me further reach so i can stand back a little bit and be less noticeable as I'm waiting for the lens to hunt back and forth before focusing. Or because ensuring sharp images at F1.4-F2 when manually focusing takes me a few seconds.

But look at the images they are sharp and much brighter than the next set.

Again and again. I always come back to here.

Treat life like an open door (and wait for someone to look at you)

What would people do without their phones. Conversation is dead.

Night 2.

A post work Friday walk around Wisbech town waiting for Laura to finish work so we can do the food shopping together. As i said earlier, use the opportunities to shoot.

27mm F2.8.

A more usable lens with a more usable focal length for ensuring focus.

A more friendly 'pre focus at 1.5mm and walk in closer to make the subject sharp' type lens.

It soon got too dark for F2.8 though. ISO2500 and a little noise reduction in Lightroom saved the day.

Always time for a smoke

I pushed myself to get as close as possible to this lady on the phone. 

The top image was 1st and was the test of strength. That look!

The 2nd was on the way back down the street as was my 'safe' shot.

I waited and waited for someone to walk by.

I say it often, Challenge yourself. 

But do what makes you happy.

Freelensing Nude With Laura

It's my 29th birthday so ive got a day off from work, that in itself is worth a yay........YAY!

Last Friday night I fancied a bit of photography and was wanting to try out Freelensing. Freelensing in simple terms is taking your lens off your camera and holding it a small distance away from the camera/lens mount and taking a photo. The reason to do this is the crazy focus plane you can achieve.

The problem with the method though is exposing your camera's sensor to the elements and the dust that's floating about everywhere. There was no way I was exposing my 5D for extended lengths of time but luckily I have a 'few' cameras laying around these days so the trusty old 450D had its moment in the spotlight.

Talking of spotlights I have recently picked up a small continuous light with barn doors from a colleague at work who had loads of camera accessories in a car boot sale box. Its an old piece of kit that gets really hot after being on for even only a few minutes however it gives out real strong source of light that is modifiable using the barn doors.

Back to Freelensing.

The gap between the camera and lens needs to remain very small however the beauty of the method is that the lens can be tilted in whatever direction you want. Depending on the direction of tilt is what is in focus in the picture. This method can also allow you to gain focus on two separate areas of the photo.

This is my first go at trying this out and let me tell you now, its not easy; the slightest millimetre change of the lens/camera gap will totally change what is in focus, this takes some getting used too.

Luckily I persuaded Laura that she didn't need any clothes on for this shoot.......WAIT....before we go any further its not one of "those" types of shoot.

I got Laura to lay on the bed and set up the light source on my tripod to my left at a right angle. The light was set up just above bed height and the doors closed slightly to concentrate the light on to Laura's face.

I really like these images and its definitely something im going to try again.

Let the fun begin.