Yesterday was the most visited day of this year’s Taste of Syracuse and I was there to try to photograph the event. Personally, things went better than I could have reasonably hoped as I enjoyed engaging conversation with other photographers who shared similar interests as me.
Things did not start out as I had hoped.
I decided that I was going to be at the event for 3 hours and I was going to work on one thing every hour. The first hour, I would work on double exposures, the next hour I would work only with my 17mm lens, and I would spend the last hour with the 25mm.
The double exposures sucked and never even survived the re-format of the card after the first hour. I did relearn that I don’t want to have the auto-gain feature turned on in camera. It flattens the contrast of each exposure a bit too much for my liking, especially when if my preferred strategy is to obtain an initial image of high contrast and then place another less contrasty and more detailed exposure on top of it.
Then I tried to capture images with the 17mm and I struggled. First, the people were often packed too tightly together such that even the 17mm was not wide enough. I often use the 17mm at home, so I am comfortable with the lens, but there was just so little space for me to move and see. I know I it ideal for layers in a composition, but everything was just too smashed together. And while I don’t mind asking someone for their photo, I feel like I need to be close to my subject to fill the frame with a single person when I am using the 17mm. I love the idea of the 17mm for environmental portraits, but (again) there was too much visual noise and too many people packed together to use it in that manner, so I tried to use it to ‘run and gun’ with very little success.
No surprise after last weekend, but the 25mm just felt right again. I was able to be an observer without being a distraction …
… and I was able to muster the courage to photograph some strangers again. Some images were made without their knowledge …
… but my favorite images were those when the subjects were engaging with me and my camera.
And I learned something today too: I don’t think I care about how ‘interesting’ a person looks (e.g. tattoos, fashion, piercings). I think I care more about the moments that may be special. I like quirky (or ironic) circumstances, but not quirky people. And as I reviewed my images I was reminded too that a ‘common’ person in good light with a wonderful expression still makes for the most interesting images.
With the last 10-15 minutes of my afternoon, I put mounted the ultra-wide 10mm on the camera and walked right into the crowd and captured a few images with the camera against my chest. My thought was that the lens provided a wide enough field of view that I would be able to capture some images up close without looking. While the focus was off a bit (I hadn’t accounted for how close I would be to people) and I need to practice holding my camera level, there is potential for using that lens in that manner I can find a way to get enough separation for the 17mm.
So … yeah … in summary: I still like the 25mm best, I’m getting better at approaching people, I’ll look for normal people in good light next time I am out, and I shouldn’t rule out the 10mm for candid street photography in tight quarters.