X-E1

Hong Kong Streets

I caught the earliest ferry from Lamma Island at 6:20am. 15 minutes later it arrived at pier 4 at Hong Kong, with the X100 ready to go. I wanted to get on the streets of HK early enough to shoot people arriving for work and avoid the 36 degree heat.

Hong Kong is a fantastic place for a street photographer, but being here early in the day was just magical. I was listening to an album on my iPhone called 'Flumina' by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Fennesz. It's a mixture of ambient synth and piano, it couldn't have been any more suitable for shooting street in such a Blade Runneresque city scape. I walked and shot on the HK streets for around three hours and it was like therapy. All I had to think about was what was in my frame.

This was also my first proper street shoot with the Fujinon 18-55mm f2.8-f4. I hadn't thought of it as a street lens, but it focuses pretty quick on the X-E1. The light is amazing in Asia and the colours from the X-Trans sensor look so great that it's a crime to convert some of them to black and white. For that reason, I'll post some colour shots from this crop on my photography blog (link at the end of this post). The shot bellow was created with a combination of long exposure and zooming. The one bellow that was a long exposure shot with the camera on a window ledge. I used a two second timer to avoid camera shake.

35mmStreet.com.DSCF2646-Edit
35mmStreet.com.DSCF2646-Edit

Street photography is a loaners sport. You need to get in the zone and in my opinion, that only happens when you're alone. it takes great concentration, but it should never feel like you're concentrating. I think I've said it before on this blog. It's photography jazz, you learn your scales (or in our case shutter speeds and apertures) and then you don't have to think about it. You just feel.

That's it for this post. Don't forget to have a look at my other blog for some colour shots by clicking HERE. And if you missed my post on the equipment I'm carrying on this trip, click HERE. I'll post more street photos from Asia as soon as I can. I've just got back to Hong Kong after a two day trip to Macau, so I'll have some shots from that crop soon. I'll also be in the Philippines soon.

Aperture-Blade Runner

35mmStreet.com.DSCF8517-Edit This is a cross post with my blog for photographers at Derek Clark Photography where you can see the colour version of the above photo.

I was out today, having coffee and talking shop with a couple of photographer friends John McPake and John Summers. After a few cups of tea and coffee and covering all things from sensors to lenses, books to editing, Santa Claus to Filipino Xmas parties and everything in between, we decided that we should be shooting pictures instead of talking about them. We made plans to go out for a days photography to a derelict building that's been on our photographic horizons for a while. But we made the arrangement that we would go out and shoot as long as the weather was ok, but if it was raining we would probably just get together indoors and talk or play around with radio triggers or light modifiers.

When I left the two John’s, I headed into town to have a look at the photography books in Waterstones. It was raining pretty hard and it was dark, but I pulled the Fuji X-E1 out of my bag and kept it up high, under my umbrella. I shot a few photos on the way to the bookstore and then a few afterwards on the way back to the car (with a really nice Time Life book having been purchased :o). I'm showing a few shots from my walk and I hope you all like them. But the main point of this blog post is just to point out that we shouldn't just go out in ideal conditions, or even fair weather. Sometimes it's the things you think you should avoid that give you something a little bit different or a little bit special. So although the golden hour is desirable, don't avoid the rain or the midday sun. Instead, we need to embrace them and use the qualities they have. The rain provides fantastic reflections and the midday sun gives us harsh contrasts shadows that can be amazing in black and white!35mmStreet.com.DSCF8510-Edit

Blackberry Had A Child...The Damn Thing Gone Wild!

Here's a few shots linked by the mobile phone. Folks on phones are probably the easiest people to shoot on the streets, as they're so connected (excuse the pun) to their phones that they tend not to notice a camera pointing straight at them. The first shot was taken outside Stills Gallery - Scotland's Centre For Photography in Edinburgh. The next two were shot in Glasgow.

We Are The Kage Collective :: An Announcement

I can finally announce the launch of The Kage Collective (pronounced Kaji), a project that I'm involved in with fellow photographers Patrick La Roque (Canada), Paul Pride (England) and Robert Catto (Australia), with me heading up the Scotland branch.

As you will see from the Kage Collective website, we are a group of international photographers shooting documentary projects about a wide variety of subjects. The one common thread that runs through the project and the thing that not only brought us together, but also binds us, is that we shoot with the Fujifilm X cameras. At the moment the X100, X-Pro1 and X-E1 are the models being used by the collective, but I'm sure other models will become available to us, and of course we can't wait to get our hands on the new XF lenses as they come available.

Kage Collective has been simmering away in the background for a few months, taking shape and getting refined ready for todays launch. It's been difficult not to let it slip a few times, especially on Twitter. I'm excited and thrilled to be a part of this collective and couldn't wish for a better group of photographers to collaborate with. To say we're on the same wavelength would be an understatement! So please take a look at the brand new Kage Collective website (built by our very own Patrick LaRoque) and have a look at our launch stories. The site will be updated regularly and will definitely give us all a bit of pressure to go out with our Fuji X cameras and document life as we see it!

The photo above is taken from my first story on the Kage site 'Running Into Darkness' which was shot on the streets of Italy this year. As you can see, my style is my style, so if you're a regular on 35mmStreet and you like my black and white photography, you should take a look at the Kage website. If you're not familiar with Patrick, Paul or Robert's work, you really are missing out on some great photography. Let me know in the comments what you think.

Fujifilm X-E1 :: A Street Photographers Dream?

All of the photos posted on this site (for at least a year) have been taken with the X100 or the X-Pro1. Out of these two cameras I would say that the X100 is the best tool for the job due to there being less shutter lag. But the X100 has had quite a few firmware updates to give it the edge. Even so, it can still be a little frustrating at times when you see a shot, take it and then curse the thing when the viewfinder display screen pops up to reveal a different photo than the one you new you had taken. Ladies and jiglly bits, I give you the Fujifilm X-E1. When I first saw the so called leaked (by the Fuji PR department) photos of this camera, I didn't give it much thought. The fact that it had no optical viewfinder made me write it off as being a camera that I wouldn't buy or use (even though I've been using the X-Pro1 EVF about 50% of the time recently. But I've started to look at it differently in the past week with the icing on the cake coming the other day with the news that it could focus in 0.1 seconds and had a shutter lag of just .005. If this is true and not just hype, the X-E1 could be one of the best street photography cameras on the market when it's released.

Take a look at my photography blog for more of my thoughts on the X-E1