Happy 2019!

This is my first blog entry in the new year and I have just finished writing down my photography goals for the remaining 349 days of 2019. After a short reflection on priorities, it comes down to 9 major goals I defined to develop my skills and activities in photography. One of those goals obviously relates to the frequency of blog posts and my wish to find and define a frequency of entries that I can manage and which accounts for family and professional activities. 

Patience

I already explained on this blog that my early understanding and exercise of street photography pushed me to never stop when out in the streets. Only recently, I started to be more patient and to work specific scenes, what usually means to find an interesting spot and then to wait for the “right” subject to get in the frame. Slowing down the process is something I definitely need to work on as I am not a very patient person beyond my photography efforts in all life situations. Just before Christmas, I decided to get home a bit later after work to use the early darkness in winter for shooting. I eventually decided to wander the streets with my camera for no longer than 90 minutes. This rough time constraint would usually have pushed me to run down the streets in an even more frantic and hectic way. But – probably due to the general gift shopping rush around me and the approaching more silent period of the year (Christmas actually never is silent, I think) – I slowed down and basically stuck to 3 or 4 spots, where I thought the setting was interesting and worth the wait until the right situation or subject unfolded in front of me. 

Backgrounds

The first spot I came to was the public market and parking, which presents one of my favorite spots for a more architectural form of urban photography. For the last months, the building was under renovation work and I was impatiently looking forward to seeing the nice new architectural elements in place. And the new exit of the parking for cars really caught my eyes that early evening. As a result, I decided to camp for a while across a small street from that spot, to manually set aperture, shutter speed, and ISO to get the right amount of atmosphere and some motion blur. The good thing was that people were in the streets to get their gift shopping done and some people walked through the frame. However, it was a bit more difficult to have only one subject at once to walk across the scene.

The following two pictures are two of the photographs I took and am happy with.

Smart Ghost | 2018

Walking Ghost | 2018

Playing with backgrounds

Windows of shops are also a welcomed background for photographs in the darkness. While in the main shopping street in my city, a shop for women’s underwear caught my eye. As a setting, using that kind of shop windows as a background is not very creative, but – again – it forced me to slow down, get the settings of my Fuji right, and wait for subjects walk into the scene. As for the photos before, it was difficult to isolate just one silhouette during the Christmas shopping rush. Below is one picture of a man walking by the shopping window displaying underwear for women.

Lingerie | 2018

May 2019 bring plenty of photographic opportunities and inspiration, the exploration of new skills and techniques, and mastering of obtained competencies to all of you!