A few shots from last week. 1 and 3 are from the X100 and number 2 is from the X-Pro1 (or maybe the X-E1). I'm so busy shooting and editing various things right now, portraits, events and documentary stuff for The Kage Collective. So I just wanted to post a few shots for now. If you're in the maket for an X100, check out the reviews by Patrick La Roque and Kevin Mullins. If you haven't seen it already, take a look at Paul Pride's new essay on Kage Collective called Spray
Aberdeen Streets
These photos were taken in Aberdeen, the night before my flight to the island of Shetland. The shot above was taken through a window, the decals acting as a mask or frame. I took two shots, but this one had the best facial expressions. X-Pro1, 35mm f1.4 at f1.4, 125th sec, 2500 ISO.
This one was shot with the X100 a little earlier. I love shooting into the sun as it's going down, creating long shadows. There's a sort of calm on the streets as the day comes to an end. X100, f5.6, 600th sec and 200 ISO.
Click HERE to see my blog post on Shetland
Shooting Street Photography With The Fujifilm X100
I get asked a lot about how I use the X100 when shooting street photography, so here it is.
My X100 Set-Up: I usually shoot at an aperture of f8 when doing street work. It gives a decent depth of field and should yield more keepers than if shooting wide open. Shallow depth of field (wide apertures) leaves little room for errors in focusing. I use Auto ISO set to a maximum of 3200, with the shutter speed set to a minimum of 125th sec. I find this shutter speed to be as low as a I like to go, unless I'm deliberately trying to add motion blur. The ability to set the Min shutter speed in Auto ISO is the main reason I prefer the X100 over the X-Pro1 and X-E1 (although I do use them for street from time to time). Another reason is the 35mm (full frame) lens that is perfect for street or documentary work. I also set Sharpness to Med-Hard (I tend to +1 the sharpness in all my Fuji cameras). I really like my X100 for street photography, but I think the X100s will be one of the best street cameras available! But with three X cameras in my arsenal, I can't justify the £1100 without offloading something first...or can I? One more thing...I use auto focus, rather than zone focusing.
Post Processing: My street photography post processing is minimalist to say the least. I'd rather be shooting than sitting in front of the computer! My basic workflow is this. Inside my Light Room pictures folder, I wave a folder called Street Photography (it took me a while to come up with that one). Inside that, I make another folder and call it Street Photog-(place)-(Date). I then throw the photos from the days shoot in there and then import them into LR4. I flick through them and hit P for pick for all the keepers. I then filter the Picks and if I want to narrow them down ever more, I hit 7 to flag it as yellow. Yellow tends to be for printing or blogging. I then send the photos that have been flagged as yellow over to Nik's Silver Efex Pro. I have three versions of a the same preset, one -1 stop, one +1 stop and one in the middle. I can basically hit one of these presets and it's job done. The preset is one that I've refined over the last year.
What I Look For: I look for anything that stands out. It could be the way someone's dressed, their hair, their skin might show a full lifetime of wear and tear. I like a bit of humour too, sometimes you see it at the point of capture, sometimes it's in post. Composition is a big thing and I always have my focus point over to the left or over to the right (rule of 3rds style). If I'm walking close to the buildings on a street, my focus point will be on the opposite side, because that's the side people will be passing me.
I hope this has been of some use? If I've missed anything pop it in the comments and I'll reply there or add it to the bottom of the post. If you found this post useful, you might also like The Digital Contact Sheet :: Episode 5, where I take a contact sheet and show how I choose and edit sone of my documentary shots.
Bristol 1 - Cheltenham 4 :: The End Is Nigh
I took all these shots when I was at the PPOTY awards last week. The one above is inside Bristol Temple Meads train station (click here for what happened outside the station). I took five shots from this spot, just waiting for interesting people to pass through the frame. This was the first. Everything bellow is from Cheltenham.
Underpasses are scary looking places. They're a rapist and muggers dream and always have a sinister feel to them. I think women should avoid them like the plague! This is the only X-E1 shot (18mm f2) of this bunch, everything else was taken with the X100.
I like anything that makes the viewer stop and think. It doesn't take long to see what's going on here, but maybe just for a second it throws in a little bit of confusion? This one is also about loneliness for me.
I think this shot sums up the times we are living in today. Empty shops and a look of despair. This is how town centers look all over the UK.
More despair on the faces of this couple. I've just realized as I've reached the end of this post, that there's a lot of gloom in these photos. I wasn't looking for it, but it's there! Even in the background of the photo above, nobody is smiling. Is this the sort of photo that will represent this post financial crash when we look back in ten or twenty years time? Or will we look back and think this was actually the calm before the storm? Who knows what's ahead for the west, we're still on the way down and it looks like more war is on the horizon...maybe of the nuclear kind!
Don't you just love blog posts that give you a warm and fuzzy feeling all over? :o)
PPOTY :: And The Winner Is...
I didn't have much expectation of winning Professional Photographer Of The Year, but as I was a finalist in the News category, I thought it was only right to go along and be a part of the awards night. At least it was an excuse for my wife Fe and I to have a day or two away. The night before the awards, I visited my dad at hospital after he had just gone through a kidney operation. He was in an enormous amount of pain and I wished the awards had been the following week, instead of the following night. But it made me think it would be really nice to win the award, because I knew that it would give him a big boost and it would mean a lot to him.
When we arrived at the venue, there was an easel for each category that had a collage of the finalists photos on it. We had a good look at each board before getting to the news category, but we were both surprised to see the other nine finalists photos printed there, but not mine. Maybe if I had engaged my brain I would have realised that none of the winners were included on the finalists prints, which were actually taped down to hide the winners. As the awards started, it was made clear by judge and compare Adam Scorly, that “if your photo isn’t included on the prints, you’ve done pretty well!”. So the penny dropped and I realised that, as mine was the only photo in the News category that was missing, it had to be the winner….dahhh!
Maybe it was an omen that earlier in the day, a pedestrian tried to re-inact my soon to be winning photo by falling in the street, which I shot with the same X100 (cue Twilight Zone music). I also took a few street shots in Brisol and Cheltenham and will be posting them here this week.
For a change, it really was back to sunny Scotland. As we walked out of the airport, the sun was shinning and the shadows were long. A combination I’m growing to love.
So the little Fujifim X100 that I took the winning shot with, just keeps taking me to places I don’t expect. It’s been a game changer for me and many others, including my fellow Kage Collective colleagues, Patrick LaRoque, Paul Pride,Robert Catto and Flemming Bo Jensen. It was really nice to talk to a few of the great people at Loxley Colour who did a fantastic job of printing all the photos, including the large ones of the winners. I was really impressed by the resolution from the X100 print, but sadly, I wasn’t able to take it on the flight home. But Loxley kindly offered to do another print that I can collect from their lab near by, so a big thanks to them.
A huge thanks to everyone that sent congratulations by text, email, tweet, Facebook etc… I really appreciate it!
- Top photo of the X100 was taken by the X-Pro1 and the 35mm f1.4
- The shot of myself was taken by Fe with the X-E1 and the 18mm f2
- Last two shots were taken with the X100
Sidestreet Shuffle
I Went for a walk yesterday although I wasn't really feeling like it. I'm lucky that even on a down day I always come back with something. Fujifilm X100, 125th sec, f8, 3200 ISO.
Unicycle Boy
It's not everyday you see a kid coming home from school on a unicycle. Shot with the Fuji X-E1 and the 18mm f2.
Professional Photographer Of The Year Finalist
I'm delighted to be a finalist in The Professional Photographer Of The Year Awards. I received an email yesterday confirming I was in the final ten of the News category. A lot of the finalist photographs from all categories will be featured in the April edition of Professional Photographer Magazine (on sale in March) and the winners will be announced at the awards event in Cheltenham at the end of March.
Mean Streets with the X100
The X-Pro1 and the X-E1 are great cameras, but when it comes to street photography, I keep coming back to the X100. It's a couple of things really, like the 23mm lens (35mm full frame wise) and the extremely quiet leaf shutter. The 35mm and the 18mm are great lenses, but for me, on the street, I like the classic 35mm angle of view. But then the title of the blog might have given that away!
Neither Fish Nor Flesh
Things have been a bit slow here on 35mmStreet as I've been really busy with a few projects, including a new website over at DerekClarkPhotography. I've also just posted Episode 3 of The Digital Contact Sheet on the blog too which might be of interest to street photographers..
I'll leave you with two sets of painted on eyebrows, one is a puppet and one is not, both are neither fish nor flesh.
