"I find that when I'm traveling my senses are heightened by being in a foreign environment, and I often see photographic opportunities in otherwise mundane places." Michael Richman, 2002
Block and Cleaver Market
Attempting to photograph the streets where you live is a bit like being a tourist in your own town. This is not made any easier when you live in a town of approximately 120,000 people.
To tackle Kingston, where I have now all year round for the past three years (and another two during school sessions), I need to identify what I'm going for. Because I know the city so well it is almost impossible to just walk around and capture the landscape as it unfolds around me. I bring with me the connotations and expectations that the past five years has taught me to find. So what then? Do I just take the pictures of the places that I think would be interesting? Well I think that is usually a given, but it doesn't lend itself well to discovery of new locations.
Instead, I chose to mimic the mindset of a tourist — sort of. A few friends had come into town for the weekend, and I decided to let them dictate the locations that we went to, as I and another friend told them about locations that a tourist might like to see while in town. Everywhere that we went to I had seen before, but by bringing people with me who did not know the city at all, I attempted to view it from a new perspective.
194 and a Half
Suiting up!
Street photography is like a really long episode of What not to Wear, agonizing over whether I am bringing too much, or too little. It is hard to try and get a kit together that will "do everything" either you don't have a long enough, wide enough or fast enough lens or it's something else. Often 50+% of what I bring I never use. I went minimal for this outing, knowing that I could come back to the same locations as many times as I want if I can't get the shot that time.
Weather wise the day was altogether miserable, but that just made me think that there would be more interesting locations and skies, overcast notwithstanding (always an optimist). I decided to wear a light anorak, and threw my gear into an empty shoulder bag. This way I would be ready for a light drizzle and I could throw whatever gear I wanted on my back without giving a thought of looking like a tourist(!) or worrying about pulling gear out of an annoying backpack.
Camera Equipment
Since I was going minimalism I wanted to have simple and lightweight gear. This meant one lens and my flash with a quick light diffuser that I could throw on if need be. Simple!
I brought my EF 50mm f/1.8 lens because it is a really light weight (plastic fantastic), very fast (good for indoors and low DOF) and it doesn't shout at people when I take their picture as the 70-200mm f/2.8 would. Did I mention the lens was cheap?(N.B. if you don't already have a 50mm prime, run to a camera store and pick one up). Having the camera gear in the shoulder bag was useful because it was always close by so I could grab it quickly in case something evolved in front of me. I threw my flash in the bag as well in case there was something inside a shop that I wouldn't have enough light for.
If I had my way, I would have changed this setup a bit. I would have used an EF17-40mm f/4 and made sure to bring a flash extension cord (or better yet a set of pocket wizards). Oh well, more toys to buy....
Sandwiches and Brambles
Stranger in a strange land
our trip about Kingston was pretty basic, we decided to head down through city park to the farmers market that was set up, check out some of the stores along the main street in town and finally head home through the area where some of the more historical building were located. Easy enough, right?
Travelling with this group as I did was really neat. The two 'tourists' I was with had their own shirt-pocket cameras and when they stopped to take a picture, I made sure that I did as well. I also took some more when I found interesting places and scenes. While the market didn't have too many opportunities, it gave me a chance to explore some of the ETTL functions that I've been meaning to, setting up different lighting zones in an image.
What of it?
In the picture here, I have set my camera to Aperture Priority (f/1.8) with -1.5 exposure compensation, and my flash (w/ diffuser) to ETTL (auto) +2.5 EV. This gave me a nice separation from the background light and made Serena pop out of the scene nicely.
Market Square
Shops
Moving on, we started to explore some of the shops along Princess Street. There are some really interesting places downtown and although there are some exceptions most of the stores are one of a kind. One very cool store is Era Vintage Apparel. Era is the sexy name for the March of Dimes store in Kingston. Walking around the shop there was some pretty normal vintage things... recycled glass wear, a wedding gown, and two really neat easy chairs, one green and one pink placed next to one another. It seemed to me that they looked just right sitting there next to one another as if to be a 'his and hers' collection. I decided to capture the set together, and used some dialed down flash to get the exposure I wanted. Processing this image, I applied a 'Lomo' colour cast to it, giving it a green and yellow stressed look.
The next shop was Cookes Fine Foods. This store has been in Kingston since 1865, and has some fantastic coffee. When I'm feeling like being expensive, this is where I head to get my grounds. The neat thing about this store is that the owners have chosen to keep with the rustic feel to the place so many items from when the store first opened are on display, including an antique cash register which seemed like an obvious place to stops and take a picture. This is where I wish I had my extension cord for my flash. The light around that particular area of the shop was terrible, so I had to make my own with flash. Unfortunately since my flash was attached to the camera it would have to be pretty harsh even with a diffuser because of the space restrictions and getting the object to fill the frame while maintaining the lowest DOF that I could. I tried using the walls make a good bounce light, but the angles were all wrong. I played around with the exposure quite a lot, and also needed to post-process the result a fair bit too. Below is the best I could get out of it. With an extension cord I could have created a far more directional light, and I think the texture of the object would spring out far more.
The last shop we visited was Minotaur Games. This place is awesome — even without bringing a camera. They hold free nights where the public is invited to play their games for free, and during the day many of the games are often left out to try and enjoy. I managed to capture so many neat things in there, but it is hard to keep taking pictures of other people's creations. Finding unique composition inside a store is difficult when everything is decidedly done with the mindset to look interesting already. Many of the games were set up, and taking close ups of game pieces using shallow DOF was a useful exercise in trying to add context to the shot, while still blurring the backgrounds to achieve separation. The small pieces are like many microcosms which are pretty fun to play with. Lastly, I found some interesting notice boards for community events and shows which are fun to read and shoot.
Instant Peotry
After the games shop, we crossed back across Princess, Brock, Johnson and the rest towards home. A few scenes caught my eye, like the real life castle that pops out in between rather normal and dull housing. I played around with some filters, and gave it a dreamy feel, let me know if you think it works (or doesn't!)
Medieval Dreams
Lessons Learned
That's pretty much the whole trip, there were some really neat shots that I wouldn't have taken if I were not with the people that I was, so I think the experiment was a successes. I managed to learn a bit about my kit, I would rather have brought a wider lens and an extension cord for the flash. In fact, it was enough of a pain that I've started working on a DIY L-Bracket. I'll save that one for the next blog though :).
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