Fuji X-Pro1: Three different kinds of shots

As I mentioned in my previous post, after the Photo Expo on Saturday I spent some time sitting at a spot in the Meatpacking district of Manhattan. That gave me a chance to play with my new flash and flash bender, and because of a few mistakes, some new settings. 

I took a bus down Ninth Avenue and as I was getting ready to leave this gentleman asked me about my photographer's vest. While I chatted with him I grabbed a few shots, from the hip, raw, no flash, camera set at auto ISO (5000), 1/250th second, f4, 18mm lens. To be honest, I cropped the image to about 1/3 of it's original size. I did a fair amount of post processing on it - I mention this because even at it's reduced size the image held up really well with quite a bit of pixel bending. I'm attracted to shooting men with beards because I love the way the XP1 renders them so crisply.

This shot was with a flash. When I set up the flash on the XP1 I have to make adjustments in my camera settings. The shutter speed must be 1/160th or less, silent mode turned off (the flash won't fire if silent mode is on), and auto ISO reset to 200. I forgot to reset the auto ISO, so this shot turned out interesting for me. The ISO was 320, shutter at 1/125th, f2.8, with the flash and flash bender. A word about the aperture setting - the EF20 has a guide number of 20, it's not really powerful, but I don't need a killer flash, so keeping the aperture open wide is necessary to give the flash as much help as possible. I really haven't put the flash through its paces at night shooting yet - waiting for the Halloween parade to do that, hoping it's not rained out. As I said for the previous photo, I'm attracted to men (in this case a beast) with a beard. Oh, OK - it wasn't the dog that attracted me to this shot. But the look on that guy's face told the whole story: 'Oh the price I pay for being a hot hunk!'

 I took this shot with the flash and flash bender. I had reset the ISO to 200, the shutter speed was 1/160th, and aperture f2.8. But, my thumb inadvertently hit the 'Q' button and I mistakenly reset the image quality to 'jpeg fine'. I've read in a number of places about the great image quality the XP1 produces in its jpeg conversion. That's all well and good, but I avoid shooting jpegs because I don't see the point in throwing away one third of the pixel information and then doing the post processing on a compressed image. So I thought processing this image would be a challenge. To be sure, there were some issues of image degradation (the skin on his neck) but for the most part I think the image held up quite well. Yes, that is a flashlight in his earlobe!

A New Spot

When I walk around New York doing my flậneur thing, sometimes I come across an interesting spot or intersection back to which I'm drawn. I love these spots because they give me a chance to sit and work the street environment with some depth while I enjoy a good cigar. I experiment with different prime lenses by waiting for a subject to reach a particular spot where I know the composition that a particular focal length will give me. 

This past Saturday, after visiting the Photo Expo show at the Javitz center (for the second time) I went back to the Meatpacking district at the intersection of Chelsea and the West Village. I discovered a spot last week that I thought was bursting with possibilities, so I wanted to do a reality check. It was better than I had remembered.

I've been planning to get to the Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village this coming Wednesday evening. In preparation for it, I purchased a flash for my X-Pro1 camera, and at the photo show found a diffuser to fit over the flash. I took the whole rig with me to experiment with, and the results were very pleasant. Using a flash for street photography, unless you are Bruce Gilden, is contradictory. It's like shouting at people, 'Hey, I just took your picture!' That's not my usual style, so at first I was a bit uncomfortable. Surprisingly I found that quite a few people responded nicely to me, and I became engaged in several conversations with people who had questions about the XP1. Jon, the person on the left, talked at some length about his experience as a press photographer. Turns out that he knew my photography mentor, Mario Cabrera. But just like everyone else, hasn't a clue as to where he his or what he's doing. 

Mario, please call home!

Jon and Tim

Photo Expo 2012

Tomorrow the Photo Expo opens in New York. When I originally attended way back in 1989 it was a huge show with a strong presence of many camera manufacturers, Apple, and Adobe. In recent years it has gotten much smaller, partly because of the incredibly high rates for exhibitors but also because it has become over the years much more consumer oriented, rather than geared towards the working professionals. It's still fun to go to - to see all the latest toys and software. If I find anything mind boggling, I'll report back on it (but I doubt that I will see much that really impresses me).

I shot these two images in an outing last week in midtown Manhattan. Lately I've been drawn to people wearing sunglasses. Not sure why, but maybe because I like to get some kind of expression in peoples' eyes, and the dark glasses poses a real challenge.

If he doesn't bring flowers, he's not getting anywhere.

Two Soldiers?

Photography: Document and Art

Walker Evans once said 'Leaving aside the mysteries and the inequities of human talent. brains, taste, and reputations, the matter of art in photography may come down to this: it is the capture and projection of the delights of seeing; it is the defining of observation full and felt.'

He was one of my photographic heroes. His work for the Farm Security Administration, which was part of the public relations blitz Franklin Roosevelt initiated to put forward his New Deal policies, produced iconic images that stand out in the history of American photography. Evans was a pioneer in the process of turning documentary into fine art photography. The Museum of Modern Art, in New York, has recently re-released an edition of his work, American Photographs, which is available on Amazon.

The best way to view and learn from the work of photographers is to see the actual prints of their work in galleries or museums (or on your own wall if you have the disposable income). Way back in second place as a medium for viewing is in photography books, and way back of that in a distant third place is on a computer screen. The reason I mention this is because after receiving my copy of the new Evans book, I pulled two other editions of his work from my bookshelf: Walker Evans - America (published by Rizzolli) and Walker Evans - Havana (published by Pantheon books. Not only is the print quality at great variance between the books, but the toning, cropping, and paper quality differ to such an extent that in many cases comparing a photograph in the different editions could lead one to think he was looking at an entirely different image.

My image for the day, which is in no way presented to compare myself to Walker Evans, interested me because the hand gesture and facial expression of the gentleman on the left gives the impression that he's pontificating about something important, the other people in the image are paying him no attention. The gentleman directly to his left, who I think is the intended audience, seems much more interested in my taking his photograph than what he is being told.

X-Pro1 nailed it!

Okay, okay, I helped a little ......

Nothing else to say.

Fuji X-Pro1 and EF20 Flash

I always enjoyed the New York Halloween parade on Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village. I made a resolution this year to go again and photograph the creative costumery. Even though the XP1 is wonderful in low light, at ISO 6400 there won't be enough light to get great shots, so I sprung for the Fuji EF20 flash. It's a neat little package, not a very high guide number - I think 20 at ISO 100 - but it will be fine for my close up shooting style.

Flash photography doesn't come naturally or intuitively to me. I really have to think about everything I'm doing, and it requires special settings on the camera. I've played with the flash around my house, but there's nothing like a live field test, so I took the camera and flash out on the streets of New York with me this afternoon. The sun was bright and the sky a brilliant blue, which gave me an excellent opportunity to do some fill-flash shooting. I walked around the Chelsea/Meatpacking district of Manhattan - near the lower end of the Highline on Tenth Avenue.

I sat on a wood bench under an overhang, and as people walked by I tried to get a flash shot of them in the shadows with the bright sun in the background. I was moderately successful, as I said - flash photography doesn't come naturally to me.

I had a conversation with this gentleman who introduced himself to me as an attorney, not a photographer - even though he was carrying a Nikon DSLR and was out for the day to shoot. He took a photo of me, and reciprocated by being very patient while I tried several different settings for the flash. The shot was with the 35mm lens set at f8. The only post processing was in Lightroom to crop a little, fix the white and black clipping, and adjust the clarity ever so slightly. The flash was off camera, tethered with a dedicated sync cable. I like being able to make the light come in a bit from the side, rather than directly forward just above the lens. My only problem with that is that I have to always hold the flash in my left hand, and I haven't yet figured out how to make the light come in from the right. In any case, I think the flash and camera did an admirable job in balancing the light between the very bright blue sky and the details on his face.

The sync speed of the XP1 is 1/160th second, which I think is a little slow, so sometimes moving things got a little blurred. I'm sure part of that had to do with my lack of experience using the combo, but that's what practice is for. The spot I chose to sit in was a constant parade of very interesting people, lots of very pretty and stylishly dressed women. A few actually gave me a present of a beautiful smile. Converting flash photos to b/w is a bit more complicated than my usual processing. It's going to take some investigation.

The Look

For the past week or so I've been focused in on hand gestures, body language, and facial expressions of looks between couples (and/or me). Walking on the street or sitting in one spot, a streettog has to always be alert and aware of serendipitous moments when they pop up, ready to grab the shot.

As I walked down Fifth Avenue the other day I saw three mannequins in a window, and the gentleman in front of them perfectly centered. He looked as though he were waiting for his wife to show up with yet another bag for him to carry. I think he had no idea why I was so interested in taking a photograph of him.

When I picked up my X-Pro1 to frame this shot ( I don't always shoot from the hip), the woman saw the motion and the corners of her lips turned up into a grin for my shot, then her friend said something that made her break into this wonderful smile.

I noticed this interesting looking gentleman putting on his sunglasses, and when I raised the camera to take the shot he looked directly at me.