When I began to develop my interest for
photography back in the eighties and early nineties I used fully manual cameras
without any auto focus capabilities. I inherited all my cameras from my father
and I never bought any pocket camera with auto focus that many of my friends
carried around. For me it was always about the manual work in the camera. I
learned early to set exposure, to choose the right aperture and shutter speed.
Back in the days I was shooting negative film and mostly ISO 100 and 200 film
speed. ISO 400 and above was a bit grainy for my taste, and I find myself still
today being a bit picky about “grain” now in form of digital noise. I started out my photography journey with
some manual Konica and Minolta cameras, where the Minolta was a true
rangefinder. I really enjoyed shooting with a rangefinder camera and I
preferred black and white film. We also had a darkroom in the basement of our
house. I didn’t shoot a ton of film back
in the days, mostly because it was expensive for a teenager to finance the cost
of film and processing and I had many other interests that poked for my
attention financially. In 1999 I bought my first SLR, a Canon EOS 300, it was a
cheap plastic camera but produced decent enough photos to keep my interest alive.
Canon was a natural choice for me because my father had some Canon gear, so
that meant I could borrow lenses from him. In 2004 I got my first digital
camera (of my wife at my 30 years birthday), a Sony Cybershot P-92, a 5
megapixel camera with a 1.5 inch screen. It was now I really got “snappy happy”
and I took a loads of images during 2004-2006 with this camera and my SLR was
retired and so was my analog photography. I haven’t shot a single role of film
since 2004.
My father has always been a friend of nature
and a serious bird watcher and in my late teens I adopted his passion for
nature and especially birds. Later this interest led me to combine photography
with bird watching, and nowadays when I am out looking for birds, I prefer to
use a telephoto lens instead of a binocular or telescope. In 2006 I bought my first DSLR, a Canon 30D
and the year after I picked up the 40D. My 40D have now started to fail on me;
it got the famous shutter button disease, where the shutter just won’t fire, so
I use the 40D only with the vertical grip as a portrait camera, because it
still works fine in all other aspects. This year I picked up the Canon 600D as
a more modern complement to my 30D and 40D. I also got into the Pentax system
with the K-5 and a few Pentax lenses. I see the two systems as complementing
each other, Canon have some stellar killer lenses but doesn’t come close to the
dynamic range and low light performance of the Pentax K-5. It’s a mixed bag
literary but I have got used to using both systems by now.
Street photography
So where does street photography come into the
picture? Well I have sporadically been shooting some street photography during
the years but nothing at all serious and in very small amounts. It was first with the announcement of the
Fujifilm X100 that I got around to start thinking about broaden my horizon and
once again pick up street photography but in a more modern and focused manner.
The digital photography era lets you try different styles and techniques
without costing you a fortune, that’s why I love the development of digital
photography so much, it really gave me a reboot for my interest in photography.
My digital street photography journey started
at the 27th of march 2007 in Rome (Vatican city) Italy. I was visiting Italy for
a biochemistry course in Maratea and I had some time off in Rome with my
colleagues. We were visiting the Vatican when my street photo “The shot” was
unfolding in front of me. A tourist taking a photograph and bending his knees
to reach down and a classy Italian lady walks into the frame from the left.
Some pigeons having a feeding frenzy in front of the man and the subject of the
man’s photograph were outside the frame. All these unrelated components
suddenly got a meaning inside the frame and got connected, and the fact that
the lady that walks right towards me is looking across the frame where the
subject of the man’s photo is appearing is just giving the photo some extra
punch.
The shot
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