- A complex work day today, both emotionally and technically. I’d made the mistake of looking at the state of the photo ‘industry’. From all that I’ve read the traditional places that paid for photography are in the process of sinking. Long term photographers have scattered, and the hoards of new students are languishing on the piers with no work. The very usefulness of still photography seems to be under question. Everyone, in their heated desperation, seems to want to be multimedia producers. I’ve decided the healthy thing to do is enjoy my year’s sabbatical and not think about how I’ll support myself. I’m doing what I love. It is important that I persist for now, and deal with whatever lies on the other side when I arrive there. I didn’t become a photographer through sensible thinking!
- After a day and a half of becoming more and more depressed at all this, I decided to just go out and shoot. That was the right thing to do, being out in the world, looking, seeing, moving helped. Not instantly, not totally, but I felt better. There wasn’t as much time in ‘flow’ as I usually have but enough. There weren’t any confrontations today, only 10 -15 people turned around after I’d taken the photo. All together I took 305 shots.
- There was a real lack of confidence at the start, and that meant less use of the viewfinder and so worse composition and more focus problems. I used the viewfinder more as I went on.
- Speaking of the viewfinder, all though I do bring the camera up to my face, because I’m taking the shot so quickly, I can only really frame ½ the shots that I’m taking. There needs to be a concentrated effort to slow down and really look through the finder. (But sometimes it’s nice to see what the camera produces without my absolute control.)
- The light was quite bad and so the colours weren’t looking so good. I tried Picture Control Standard (on Nikon) and that just looked garish (on the camera and back at home). Neutral just looked to lifeless under the heavy clouds so I changed to Monochrome. In colour I tried to shoot RAW, but don’t really see the need for RAW in monochrome as White Balance doesn’t seem to have a huge impact on the photo. My exposure seems to be pretty good (now that I have it at 0) so there is little that needs to be done when I import the images. I auto-tone now when I import images. It seems to be working fairly well, although there is often a tendency for Lightroom to lighten the exposure too much, and make things too vibrant.
- Seemingly lots of focus issues (back focus mainly). Need to quantify. I have not started tracking the number of focus problems in a spreadsheet yet. It felt like I was a dragging on the shutter release, half pressing for focus and then trying to let the servo follow the subject. Unscientifically, this didn’t result in as many good shots as taking the shot in one hit, so that the the focus is locked as close to the exposure being made as possible as the subject is usually moving fast on the street. The other thing I wasn’t doing well was making sure the center focus point was targeted at the subject. Although, I was using dynamic AF today and it may have been the other focus sensors that had taken over. Will try using single center focus point tomorrow. One of the problems is it is hard to frame a subject off the center line as there is not enough time to lock focus in the center and then recompose the shot. I usually have less than a second shot times.
- Shutter speeds were mostly acceptable as I was shooting at 1600ISO and <f5.6. Some of the photos have good bokeh that really isolate the subject from the often very chaotic background of Dhaka streets. I’m not sure if that’s the aesthetic I really want. The problem with this lens (Nikkor AF-D 24mm f2.8) is that I’d have to shoot f22 to get from 0.5m to infinity. The first obvious problem is that the shutter speeds become too slow for the amount of movement in the scene and in my hands as I have to take the shot quickly. The other is that I really need to start even shorter than that (0.3m) for the aesthetic I prefer, which is to have large elements close to the camera as well as detail further away. At f22, the DOF goes from 0.3m to 0.5m, that’s it. The Sigma 30mm 1.4 I have doesn’t have DOF scales so I’ll have to test if that’ll be any better for what I need. This is the main reason that I’m using autofocus on the streets, rather than being pre focused.
- What I was supposed to shoot today was mid shots of interesting looking bengalis with either empty space around them, or heavily blurred backgrounds. That didn’t end up happening. Had some ideas to shoot women in burqas. Very mysterious, threatening. Are burqas supposed to scare men?
- 2800 photos in Bangladesh.
Posted 2 years ago
