cat flirting with girl © Lilly Schwartz 2011
These days it’s difficult for me to sleep or relax, because I’m in the middle of finishing my MSc dissertation. If I wouldn’t go out to take pictures every day, I would probably not even leave the house, because I feel I should do more work. That’s why I’m always looking forward to the early evening hours when I grab my camera and think about where to go. It’s a time where I can forget about my research and just relax for a bit.
Yesterday’s photo was taken just a block from here with a new piece of gear I bought: A wide angle converter. As you can see it’s definitely not perfect, since I get bad cut-offs and vignetting in the corners and considerable loss of sharpness towards the edges. I removed the cut-offs, because they’re really a bit too much. Although the converter is far from ideal, it’s nice to try out the effect and decide whether a wide angle lens is worth the investment at some point. Like macro lenses also wide angle lenses are quite expensive, so it’s better to buy a converter to try it first than to buy expensive kit that you will rarely use.
I also realised yesterday that I actually have been almost everywhere in the immediate neighbourhood, even including some of the backyards of quiet side streets. However, if I only go one subway stop from here there is a whole other neighbourhood to explore. It seems that I’m not going to run out of things to take pictures of in a city like Berlin as someone who is mostly interested in the overlooked details of everyday situations.
And even if I run out of things to shoot in the immediate neighbourhood then there is always a piece of new gear to get a different perspective on things. And there is also my trip next week: I will have to go to Brighton to hand in my dissertation and instead of flying directly back here I will make a stop in Düsseldorf to visit my dad. To be more precise, I’ll be going to a boring small town near Düsseldorf where my dad chooses to live for some strange reason. It’s the perfect suburban nightmare with lawnmowers and neighbours who give you strange looks. However, since I will have finished and handed in my dissertation by then, I’ll just use my newfound freedom and go back to some places around there that I really like. Some of them are great spots for taking pictures too.
There is always more to explore!
Very cool! I love street photography, but I am HORRIBLE at it! Maybe some day I’ll get a little quicker and a bit less ’embarrassed’ about it. I hope.
I don’t think vignettes are always a bad thing. If it’s unwanted it can be annoying (and they do get used a lot), but I think they can also draw your eye into a scene. Anyway, that’s my clumsy way of saying I think this works very well.
I hope you have a safe trip – have fun!
🙂
Ah, glad you like it! I actually take very few proper street photography pictures. Sometimes I try, but it’s tough to get the right moment into the frame. People usually just end up in funny positions normally 😉 This one was just a lucky shot! I still have to practice this a lot.
I agree about the vignettes, I also use them, but with moderation and I like to have control over them. Obviously, in this case I don’t have much of a choice. If I crop the picture right then it’s not so bad though. In this case it does work ok 🙂 Thanks by the way, I’ll still be updating the blog, just with pictures from different places!
Your blog is always exciting to check up on. It seems like you’re always out on adventurous street photography trips. Do you have any tips on how to capture shots without your subject looking at you? In this photo it looks like youre just feet away from this woman.
Thanks Mary, indeed every night I go out and just walk through the streets with my camera. There is always something interesting to find!
In my experience there are two ways of getting shots with people not looking at you:
1. Make them not realise that you’re taking a picture of them. Use a telephoto lens and take pictures from afar and when they notice, look up from your viewfinder and look into a different direction, not at them, then they’ll think that you’re taking a picture of something else and relax.
2. Corner them. How I took this shot was to just shoot the cat and since I was right at the edge of the sidewalk the woman had to walk through the frame. She was aware of me and didn’t want to appear in my picture, so she was just walking quickly looking straight ahead. If people don’t want to be photographed they look somewhere else. By the way, I don’t even know how close I was because I was looking through the viewfinder and the wide angle converter distorts the distances.
Hope this helps 🙂
I’m really enjoying your posts and photos, and it seems like now when I go out with my camera I started paying more attention to the ordinary again, searching for something to photograph! Keep up the good work!
Aww, thanks! I’m glad that I can inspire you to pay more attention to the ordinary stuff. It can be pretty interesting too 🙂 Thanks for stopping by 🙂
Hey cool!!!
Thanks 🙂