Liverpool Street Shoot

Liverpool Street Shoot

I went to Liverpool on Saturday, principally to visit the Open Eye Gallery, but also to try some more street photography.  The gallery itself was a bit of a disappointment but I really enjoyed wandering around a new city grabbing shots as I went.

The image shown above was taken minutes after arriving in the city, it's the stairway in large underground car park.  Some children were playing on the semi-transparent roof and it created a strange abstract image when I looked straight up at it.

Currently I'm drawn to capturing images of the older generation.  This group caught my eye as I walked between two shopping centres.  The postures and interactions between the two pairs was appealing.  The lady with the legs crossed in the 'wrong' direction serves as the focal point for the shot and I was lucky that they were sat under a stairway as this created a relatively neutral background for me.  I love that each of the subjects has a different facial expression, I wish the lady on the left hadn't caught sight of the camera.  The camera, my GX1, worked as brilliantly as ever at capturing detail - you can even see the support sock on the lady second from the left. 

This street performer was keeping a large crowd enthralled.  I just caught the end of his first drum solo and put some money in his bowl.  This made me more confident about taking photos of him and I tried several different positions and angles until I thought I had something usable.  One of the bad habits I'm trying to overcome is 'chimping'.  This is where you take a photo and then, straight away, stare at the LCD screen and make 'ooh ahh' sounds.  It's a bad habit as you can guarantee that the 'decisive moment' will occur as you look at the screen and you will miss it.  I am also trying to shoot at the 14mm end of my telephoto lens as it forces me closer to my subjects and gives a more personal feel to the images.  As with all my black and white images I converted this using the truly amazing Silver Efex Pro 2 software.  For this shot I had to use individual control points to lighten the drummer's face very slightly to improve it as a focal point at the top of the bucket-bottle-face triangle. I was lucky that in this image two of the bystanders were looking straight at the drummer and this helps to bring the viewer's eye back into the frame.

This final image was taken whilst I was grabbing some calories in a fast food restaurant.  I was sat in the window so I could try and take pictures of people gawping at a large menu board.  I happened to notice that a second menu board was splitting the harsh midday light into two distinct beams.  I waited patiently for someone to sit at the window and was lucky enough that this guy came along.  He was setting up his meal and very distracted and so I grabbed two frames as he dipped his head into the light beam.  

There are a few more images from the day on my Flickr pages and you can see them HERE

Visit to Blenheim Palace

Visit to Blenheim Palace

Just a short post today and a few pictures that I took whilst visiting Blenheim Palace (the birthplace of Winston Churchill).  The first image that opens this post is a typical toursit view looking in through the palace gates.  I took a shot of this with my iPhone using the new 'Hueless' app and was really pleased with the results.  I did of course take another shot using the GX1 and this is the one shown.  I converted it using Lightroom 4 and Silver Efex and am really pleased with the result.  I was even more happy when I noticed an almost identical print for sale in the palace gift shop for £75! After my last post I decided to only take the GX1 with me and loved the opportunities it gave me.  I hadn't realised how threatening a 5D looks when waved about at a subject but the GX1 was so discrete.

Of course it wouldn't be a day out if I wasn't trying to capture pictures of elderly people and this is typical of the shots I got.  I am worrying a little about this project as it is currently lacking a direction.  I need to find a specific focal point and try and capture images that support that concept.  I think my original idea of a generation that is 'out of touch' with  modern society is a good one but I am having to rely on chance encounters to get my images.  

I like the personalities in this image and the real differences in the faces of the two women.  I used Silver Efex for some dodging and burning to ensure that the focal points were where I wanted them, but perhaps should have shot with a shallower depth of field.

This was supposed to be an image for a series I'm working on involving dog owners but this little character was too full of energy to sit still for even a second.  I love how this shot came out though, full of movement and personality.  The dog was really dark in colour but the camera was able to capture all the details in RAW and it was easy to pull out all the detail in those fine hairs.

A few more of my pictures from the day on Flickr HERE

Lumix GX1 Test Shoot

Shrewsbury flooded

First Shots with Lumix GX1

If you saw my last post you will know that I have recently bought a Panasonic Lumix GX1 with the 14-42mm power zoom lens.  I decided that I would take it out for a test run and see how it coped with some street photography.  I have a Canon 5D Mk2 but trying to shoot subtlely with this beast is impossible and so I needed a smaller camera (but couldn't afford an X-pro1!).

I decided to see how good that camera would be in its iAuto mode - it looks at each scene and chooses an appropriate shooting mode based on what it thinks it is taking.   All of the images shown have been tweaked in Lightroom 4.1 to try and get the best from them.  If you click on each image you should be able to see a larger version.

Speeding Cyclist

The shot of the cyclist was taken with me standing stationary and panning as the cyclist shot past.  The image seems dark overall but this is because the clouds were gathering and it was about to rain.  

Flick the Vees

For this image I was walking towards the group of lads and gave the camera about a second to focus before pressing the shutter all the way down.  There is a little bit of blur at the feet but the shot is definitely usable and prints well at 8x10 size.  The conversion to black and white was done by simply desaturating the image in Lightroom so more work would be needed if I was using this image properly.

Grocery Store

The camera handled all the colours of these bright shelves really well and only some very minor tweaking was required to get this to an acceptable level.

Newspaper Sellers

Another B&W conversion but for this image I used Silver Efex Pro 2 to give me much more control over what was happening.  Once I was happy with the conversion I added some film grain to give a slightly more retro feel to the image.  I took this shot by shooting between passing groups of pedestrians but despite the tricky conditions the camera did really well.  For future shoots I am going to look at setting one of the custom functions to work in iAuto mode but with a black and white LCD display (still capturing in RAW).

Smoker BW

Silver Efex again to adjust this image.  I've included the original shot as it appeared when imported into Lightroom as a comparison.  I had to remove a few distracting light spots but you can see just how much detail this little camera is able to capture.  I was walking past the doorway at a normal walking speed and gave the camera barely any time to focus and shoot.  There is some blur visible in the image but I think it is perfectly acceptable.  If I needed a sharper image then all I would need to do is halt briefly mid step and the shot will be sharper.

Smoker original shot

Passengers 

I have taken quite a few shots of passengers as they travel and I know how tricky this can be.  My Canon G9 would never be able to handle it and even some of my 5D shots were pretty poor.  This shot was taken as I waited in my car at traffic lights.  The bus pulled up alongside and so I wound down my window and fired off two shots.  I had to increase the vibrancy and contrast in Lightroom to pull out all the details but the camera coped well.  The sensor has a dynamic range of 18EV and so it is easy to shoot dark and recover highlights later - the clouds in the top left of the frame appeared 'blown' but reducing highlights in LR easily recovered the hidden detail.

Summary

I love this little gem of a camera.  I took 102 photos during the two hours I was walking through the streets and after importing them into Lightroom was delighted to discover that 80 were usable.  A similar test with my G9 last year gave me about 10 usable shots out of 100!  Although it was initially hard for me to trust the camera in iAuto mode it actually works very well.  Since taking these shots I've discovered an iAuto+ mode that does all the hard work but allows some additional control over depth of field, focus point, exposure and white balance.  

The power zoom kit lens worked well and was fast and responsive.  It is possible to set the zoom into a faster mode but the level of fine control is lost so I stuck with 'standard' speed.  A lot of the images appeared to have problems when bright reds were captured.  This problem was less obvious when looking at the same shots on an iPhone and MacBook Air, so it may be time to buy a calibrator for my monitor (although none of my G9/5D shots have this issue).  

I had the camera in my pocket without a strap attached and it definitely cost me a second or two to get the camera out.  I would recommend a neck or wrist strap if you were trying to capture street candids but the benefit of keeping the camera in my pocket is that it wasn't on display and so didn't alert my subjects.

The camera is not weather sealed and there are warnings all through the documentation about this.  I was shooting in drizzle for some of the time and this caused me some concern.  When the camera is powered down the telephoto lens retracts and this drags any rain droplets on the lens into the lens housing so use with caution!

The battery is still showing a full three bars after the shoot and I'm using a genuine Lumix battery pack.  I have ordered a third party battery as an emergency back up and I'll report on that later.

More of the images from the shoot are on my Flickr stream and can be seen HERE