35mm Street is the street photography blog by award winning photographer Derek Clark. It features tutorials, tips and tricks and lots of pictures from an experienced street photographer.
It’s been a while since I last shot on the streets. Things are different. Wearing masks in shops is compulsory, but a lot of people also choose to wear them outside. Shops have one way systems in place, hand sanitiser dispensers at the entrances, and a list of rules for would-be shoppers. I found myself in the photography section of Waterston’s bookstore, and for the first time ever I had the full mezzanine floor and the floor below to myself, the coffee shop below closed until further notice.
The biggest thing I miss since we went into lockdown in the UK is definitely being out in the city shooting street pictures. Having to stay at home is not a big deal for me, in fact I’ve quite enjoyed this time to get some work done that has been getting put off for a while. But I do love being out there walking for miles and taking in the sights and sounds of the busy streets. One of the worst aspects of this coronavirus outbreak is the unknown aspect of the whole thing. At this point we have no idea how long it will take for this virus to go away, or if it ever will go away. The question has popped into my head many times recently - What if this is the turning point in history? What if busy streets and social interacting become a thing of the past?
Central Station, Glasgow 2019 (above) and 2020 (below)
That old saying ‘Use it or loose it’ just might be a thought we should pause on for a minute. We have been moving away from direct communication for a long time, since email, mobile phones, and then smart phones and tablets. We sit opposite real people on trains, people with stories we don’t know, and yet we bury our faces in a screen and devour other peoples versions of what they want you to think is their real life. But actually their lives revolve around creating bullshit to keep the illusion of their fake life going. It’s like The Truman Show in reverse. So maybe Mother Nature has decided if we are not going to use physical contact, we should loose it.
Last week I felt I just had to get out there and document this time in history. Covid-19 is no doubt the biggest global threat since the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. And by the way, That virus had nothing to do with Spain but was actually born in the USA. Anyway, I drove the 20 minutes to get to the city and parked up. I thought there would be lots of parking spaces but I guess the people that have no option but to go to work are probably using cars rather than trains or busses. I sat inside the car for a while debating if this was a good idea or not. There was a side of me that was saying '“keep away. danger. This doesn’t feel right”. But I had to do what I came here for, especially in case the lockdown became even more enforced than it already is.
As I walked these same streets that I have walked so many times, I was struck by just how eerie it was. It felt like a movie, possibly 28 Days Later. There was a quietness to the city that I have never experienced, not even first thing in the morning before the hustle and bustle begin. There were a few people walking there, but they were keeping a safe distance. If someone came toward me on the pavement and there wasn’t a lot of room, I would walk onto the road to pass them. If 2 metres is the suggested distance to keep, I would rather go to three metres.
Let’s hope this virus is a once in a century pandemic and it goes away soon, and never to return. But if not and life doesn’t return to the way it was just a few months ago, isn’t it lucky that street photographers captured the way we were (cue the Barbra Streisand track :o).
I recently posted a review of The Meike 25mm f1.8 manual focus lens on my regular blog (also on this site). Feel free to go check that out. But I wanted to post a bunch of street photography pictures here to show and talk about how this lens is suited to the street photographer. You can also buy the lens HERE
If you fantasise about roaming the streets with a Leica M, but are unable to afford such an expensive camera (Sadly I’m in that department), then maybe a manual focus lens will get you part of the way there. Attaching the Meike 25mm f1.8 to my X-Pro2 changed both the way that camera performs and feels, and changed the way I shoot with it too. But it’s not just about switching to manual mode, there’s more too it than that. It slows you down, makes you more precise, and forces you to pay more attention to what is in your frame.
At the equivalent focal length of around 38mm in full-frame terms, the 25/1.8 is not the easiest lens to use for zone focusing. It’s not quite wide enough in my opinion (28mm FF being the sweet spot for me). But with a little practice, you can quickly get used to focusing manually and nailing the shot. Not only is this possible with static subjects, but with subjects moving toward you too.
The 25/1.8 is very smooth to focus and just the right stiffness to make sure not to overrun the desired position by accident. I bought a focusing tab made by TAAB in the US. This product really makes the Meike lens perform better (or perhaps the photographer), but TAAB are in dire need of worldwide distributors and the experience of buying and shipping from the U.S. isn’t a good one. But I’m glad I have one now.
The Meike lens is not the sharpest wide open, but f2.8 and beyond is fine. I mostly shoot at f8 or f11, so there is no problem for street. I wish Meike would have used different colours for the metres and feet markings to be able to tell them apart at a glance. I also wish the centre, focus mark would have been brightly coloured. I find it more difficult to see at a glance than I would have liked. I have used an orange piece of stick paper cut into a triangle for a few weeks, but this is starting to wear away. So my next attempt will be to put a little dot of yellow or orange luminous paint. Talking about this centre marking; it’s worth mentioning that it is not actually bang in the centre, but slightly to the right as you look straight down from camera position (photographers view). I thought this might just be my copy, but a friend of mine bought one and his is exactly like mine. I bit annoying!
I would definitely recommend trying a manual focus lens for your street photography. It’s a different experience and the size of this little 25mm is great (especially on a rangefinder-style body like the X-Pro2, X-E3 etc). Sometimes you just need to change things up. I can get a little too comfortable with zone focusing using the X70 from the hip, but there’s nothing like using a viewfinder.
So set your camera up in a minimal way. Make it function like a film camera, then add a manual focus lens to the mix, and get out there and feel like a purest (albeit a digital one perhaps).
Out for a walk in the city today with John Summers. Grey miserable weather, but the coffee was warm and the company was good. All of these were shot on the Fuji X-Pro2 with the £65 manual focus Meike 25mm f1.8 lens. Inexpensive but well built. It’s more of a Voigtlander copy. I was using an aftermarket Leica style focusing tab by TAAB for the first time. More on the lens and the focus tab soon.
Don’t forget to look up
Looking over some of the many draft blog posts that I just didn’t get to posting this year. I came across this one from the summer. Here in the UK, we go from 10pm sunsets in the summer to 4pm sunsets in the winter. We’re now in the short day, long night, grey misery with many months to go until summer. So I thought it would be good to put this post out now…as a reminder.
Drug retrieval system…Glasgow style
It’s that time of the year again, Edinburgh Festival. That means a meet-up with friends to visit the annual World Press Photo exhibition in The Scottish Parliament building and then a bit of street photography. WPP was excellent as always and just as depressing. Don’t expect happy smiley pictures. It’s all hard hitting stuff as usual. Well worth a visit before it ends soon.
Thanks to John & Bill for a great day out, ending in an unexpected show (Have I Got News For You).
I decided to head out for a bit of street shooting on Friday, but when Friday arrived it was pouring with rain. But an arrangement is an arrangement even if it is just with yourself. It was so bad I had to buy an umbrella to keep my cameras dry, even though I had already been soaked through.
There are two kinds of a rainy day here in Scotland. There are really dark horrible days and there are bright days. It can still bucket with rain but the latter can be a bit deceiving with popping colour and higher meter readings than expected. This was one of those days.
There’s a mixture of X-Pro2 with the 16/2 or the 35/2 and the X70 shot from the hip.
Have a great weekend.
The most asked question I get about my street photography is about how I process my black and whites. The answer is always - Nik’s Silver Efex Pro, and the reason for that is pretty much the Structure feature. Structure brings out textures in things like wood and stone. But having to export everything from Lightroom to Silver Efex Pro is a pain, but it’s always been worth it because Lightroom just didn’t have anything like Structure…until now.
With the latest update of Lightroom, we now have Texture, which can be found in the Basic Panel. It sit’s above the Clarity Slider, which is a bit annoying because I’m so used to Clarity being at the top in the Presence section. Texture can also be found in the Brush, Radial and Gradient tools for a bit of local adjustment.
So this is my first attempt at a Lightroom preset for black and white street photography that gets me in the ballpark of Silver Efex Pro. I’ve got some tweaking to do, especially how it handles the colour blue.
It feels like a while since I shot some street photography in Edinburgh. I had an hour to spare while I was in the capital last week and decided to pull out the X70 for some Zone Focusing fun.
As the title would suggest; this post contains my favourite shots from 1 hour, 47 minutes on the street. Less than that really because I spent around 20 minutes in book shops). My first shot of the day was in the train station just after I got off the train (minding the gap) and the last was back at the station, just before I bought the train. I took 175 pictures, all of them on the Fujifilm X70. All were shot using the zone focus method and possibly all of them were taken at f8, 1/500th of a sec on Auto ISO. I used my EV compensation dial to adjust for changes in light (walking into shade, facing the sun etc). I selected 52 out of the 175, edited 34 in colour and then made virtual copies in black and white. I exported 62 pictures (31 colour, 31 b&w) and if my count is right, I have posted 26 of them here (6 colour, 20 b&w).
The light was really nice today. The way it bounced off buildings as the sun dropped lower in the sky was fantastic. Here in the UK we get extremes when it comes to the amount of daylight hours. In the winter it gets dark around 4 pm, but in the summer months we have daylight well past 10 pm. There’s almost 9 hours more daylight between the summer and the winter solstices, which is probably why we’re all pale and miserable here during the winter:o)
