So, the last photo shooting of Creative Street Photography Course was taken in China Town and Glebe area. It was a cloudy day with bit of rain, thankfully the weather wasn't too naughty as it hardly rained after we started shooting. The theme of the day was paradox although I pretty much failed to create something in a paradox. Instead, I was mainly focusing on shooting people as usual.

Chopper, China Town.
There is something very raw about the butcher. His face shows years of experience and the old cleaver in his hand seems to be a part of him that is ready to cut anything. No matter what type of profession you have, mastery level of experience just can't be hidden after decades of experience. When a man shows that sort of expertise, it's always fascinating to watch even that is just cutting meat.

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Raining Day
What's that?
Nowadays we are all photographers, including myself, with so many available tools there are plenty of places and chances to take an image. Just this time I had no idea what picture she was taking and the man was looking at.

Me
And it's time for me to take my own photo. Who else?

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On the day I also tried shooting from the hip technique a lot. Basically it's like a blind date. You wouldn't know what result will come out of your camera and after numerous trials and failures, my chance of getting something decent seems increasing. However, shooting in this way really gives me mixed feeling of joy and guilt.

In pros you get to see from unusual perspective as the lens lies very low in your body, the image looks like a view from a small kid. It truly makes the image more interesting than your normal shooting angle. Furthermore, the subject is completely unaware of the existence of your camera - at least that's the purpose - so you get to capture a very candid expression of your subject.

Waiting
Freezing the moment 1
Freezing the moment 2
Tea Time
Not for me
In cons, it doesn't feel like photography. You are not compositing the scene, not thinking about the exposure or shutter speed, very much likely you preset the settings to be suitable for this kind of shooting and just point your camera somewhere and wish something good will come out in the end.

It even feels somewhat voyeuristic as the core of your shooting style is deceiving your subject, especially people on the street. The street photography does not have to be that way. I do point my camera to people knowing that the subject will also know me photographing them, although I try to be as discrete as possible, but that's not the case every time. In fact many times that interaction with the subject leads to a pleasant conversation with them, which is another good part of street photography.

So when I was going through the above photos, it felt like love and hate relationship. I loved the result, but hated the process.

Market Day
Whose hands?
Going Home?
Still a hipster
All the images were taken with Canon 40D with Sigma 30mm lens. Actually that's only DSLR lens I have which is suitable for street shooting. This 30mm lens with 1.6 crop censor gives me a good (nearly) 50mm standard focal length which I do love so much. Clean, straight and real all the time. I really wish Fujifilm will release the 50mm conversion lens for X100 someday as they did one for 28mm. That would complete X100 in a perfect way, for me at least.

Recently, I have been shooting with X100 mostly and it's been a while I used 40D on the street. Now I can really tell that the camera really attracts more attention from your subject, just simply due to its chunky size, which is really not ideal in many situations.

However, I definitely have to mention about the focusing and shooting speed you get from DSLR. X100 is infamous for its slow focusing (although it's been much alleviated with the excellent firmware updates) and not having to worry about it at all is truly pleasant. The peace of mind you get, "You press the shutter, the camera will get it right", something has been totally missing with my X100 shooting experience.

Since I bought a new camera, now I can really appreciate my old one. Doesn't it sound familiar to something in our life?


Thanks for visiting.

All the images were published under the "Creative Commons" licence.