I do not have the mind of a street photographer. A great street photographer anticipates how people and objects will come together and manages to be there, waiting, right at that moment.
My mind does not work like that. I see a thing I like (a mural, perhaps), and think to myself, "That needs something to add interest to it"... so I wait until some people walk in front of it or something. Then I realize I don't like the lens I'm using, so I change that. Then I realize that somehow I've managed to turn off the auto-focus on my camera, and spend a few minutes staring at the various inscrutable controls till I see something that is now set to "M". I switch this to "S" (makes perfect sense, doesn't it?) and voila! I'm once again using the autofocus. Sigh. Okay, now I'm ready to shoot. At that moment, of course, the street is eerily empty. So I wait. Watch some pigeons. Watch cabs race by. Finally, someone comes.
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Golden Gate Bridge in fog, San Francisco, Ca
I'm disappointed. It's true. Recently I've have started really using the digital camera I bought this spring. I have begun to get a sense of the things I've gained (instant gratification, instant exposure feedback, not having to cart around loads of film all the time). But this past Monday I learned what I've lost: the ability to exploit reciprocity failure. Reciprocity failure, bane of bean-counter photographers everywhere, means that at exposures above a certain length of time stange things start to happen with film. The exposure time lengthens, and with that comes a lovely pinky-purple shift to many films that means that just-after sunset photos like this one should achieve a color palette that is near-natural, but better-- a slightly amped-up color to the sky. It's something that landscape photographers have exploited for years, but with digital, it's just gone. Of course I can tweak the color later in photoshop, but I don't want to. I want my pink sky back, dammit.
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