Shot with my Fujifilm X100T.
Category: Photography – Fujifilm X100T
I was in San Francisco today for some street photography with my friend Doug Kaye. After a lovely lunch at Café de la Presse, a French bistro at the corner of Grant and Bush (next to the Leica SF Store!), we were walking down Grant when this woman walked quickly by us – all dressed up in the Happy Birthday America spirit!
Happy Birthday America indeed – hope you have a lovely holiday weekend!
Last Friday, in New York’s Central Park, we came across a father and his two sons singing hymns in this underground terrace. Their singing was majestic – and I captured a few images of them singing. This is one of my favorites – Abraham.
I’m just back from a beautiful week of street photography in New York City. Here’s the story about this remarkable week.
My friend Doug Kaye and I happened to learn about photographer Peter Turnley during a visit last fall to the new Leica Store in San Francisco. Their first exhibition was of Peter’s work – and we were truly struck by his wonderful work, all displayed in black and white prints.
After that visit to the Leica Store gallery, we began learning more about Peter and his work – and about his workshops. Sometime late last year we both decided to sign up for Peter’s New York City workshop to be held in June 2015. Doug and I had thought we were pretty much done with workshops – but we both really appreciated Peter’s work so we signed up. We weren’t disappointed – this was a beautiful workshop, one which I would highly recommend.
I’m still thinking about the teachings Peter shared with us during the week – and will post more about that soon. Meanwhile, here are a few of the images that resulted from Peter’s encouragement – all shot with my Fujifilm X100T.
I’m now in my sixth month of dedicated street shooting with the Fujifilm X100T. When I began this journey, it was to help me prepare for a workshop with Peter Turnley coming up later this month in New York City. I decided I wanted to try to this particular workshop with a minimalist set of gear – and my choice of “weapon” was the lovely Fujifilm X100T.
Why the X100T? It’s a nearly perfect camera for street photography – in my opinion. Small, yet powerful in terms of image capture. Minimalist in terms of only two potential lens focal lengths in my case – the native 35mm equivalent and the TCL-100 conversion lens which offers an optional 50mm equivalent. The built-in 3 stop neutral density filter allows me to shoot nearly wide open – for a very shallow depth of field – in even bright sunlight. It’s just a magical combination for street work.
Here are a few recent examples from last week – out shooting on the San Francisco streets with my friend Doug Kaye. Hope you enjoy!
On a recent trip to Sydney, I opted to travel for the first time with Air New Zealand – connecting in Auckland to Sydney and, on the return, spending an overnight in Auckland before heading home to San Francisco.
I had literally about an hour on the streets of Auckland with my Fujifilm X100T. I put the X100T into monochrome JPEG mode – with the red filter and cranking up both Shadows and Highlights to +2. The monochromes are extra contrasty – and I also dialed down Sharpness a bit further emulating a film-like effect.
I look forward to getting back to New Zealand for more photography. Air New Zealand is a great airline – they do a great job and their 777-300ER cabins are a delight.
I was in London this week for a hectic few days of business meetings.
Wasn’t able to get any serious street photography time, unfortunately, but did capture a few fun images with both my Fujifilm X!00T and my ever present iPhone 6 shooting out the taxi window.
Hope you enjoy!
I wasn’t able to do much photography this week – and felt a need to both get out to shoot – and just to exercise! I love walking with my camera in my hand – looking for the light, beautiful backgrounds, and great people. My muse today was the recently published book “See San Francisco
24th Street was my playground. I was lucky and found a close by parking spot on Jersey Street, just south of 24th. It was a beautiful early afternoon in San Francisco – and I had a great time exploring this new territory for me with my Fujifilm X100T
Hope you enjoy these images!
Here’s an image from a recent San Francisco photo walk along Market Street with my friend Doug Kaye. This particular image, while interesting in color, actually needed to be processed in black and white. Why? Sometimes the colors in an image just add “noise” – in the sense that they’re distracting. By processing the image in monochrome, that color “noise” falls away and you can focus on the lights and shadows – and, more importantly, on the actual subject of the composition.
This is a great example where monochrome was just right.
For street photography, the genre is perhaps best known for black and white images. But, for me – perhaps as a result of the strong influence that Jay Maisel had on me last year – I often choose color. But not exclusively. Jay’s mantra is “light, gesture, color” – and for a lot of images that combination is very powerful and products the best result.
But, there are many images where the monochrome treatment of black and white yield a more “powerful” image. I’m not one to prefer one over the other – each image I take provides me with the option to choose either monochrome or color. I shoot my Fujifilm X100T in RAW+JPEG mode – with the JPEG style often being one of the monochrome styles. But, sometimes, I opt for my JPEGs to be processed in the X100T using one of the color modes – with Classic Chrome and its subtle color treatment increasingly being my favorite.
This image is an example. I opted to leave it in color – Classic Chrome – as I love the rose color in both the signage and the bricks on the sidewalk along San Francisco’s Market Street.
Each image has its own personality – treat each image that way and decide which is best: color or monochrome. Today’s digital cameras give us that option!
