A Game Changer for My Photography
If you listen to my podcast you would know we recently got our car sent over from Perth. Although a car isn’t photography related, it is a game changer for my photography.
The initial thought may be that it’s something related to automotive photography but that is also incorrect. The plain and simple reason a car is game changing to me is because I can now get to locations much easier. For example, if I want to get to Kirribilli (one of my favorite spots to shoot) it’s roughly 30-45 minutes to get there.
I would usually take about 15-20 minutes to walk from my door to the train platform, about 10 minutes for the train to get Milsons Point station then another 5 minutes to walk down to the foreshore. This might not sound so bad but when you add a few kilograms of camera gear and a bad back, it can be quite a hassle.
So how much time do I save by driving there? Quite a bit. I drove there the other day in peak hour traffic which took me about 25 minutes which was pretty good considering how congested the roads where. We had a clear evening so I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to shoot and grabbed my 100-400mm to give it a good workout.
Although I didn’t use it, I also took my RF 35mm f/1.8 with me purely because I didn’t have to worry about the extra weight of carrying it in my bag. My original plan was to take some shots with the 100-400mm, go back to the car to change lenses then try with the 35mm but the light disappears so fast this wasn’t an option.
As you can tell by the more warm sunset colors, the shot above was the first image I took. Usually I’m more of a blue hour person and prefer cooler tones, but there’s something about that image I really love. In fact I’ll be adding this to the top 25 section of my portfolio. After getting that shot, I tried out some other techniques then ended up capturing the image you see below.
I had actually captured a slightly similar but much wider view of this a few months ago. Ever since then I’ve been wanting to give it another try but with something longer. For this location in particular, I feel focal lengths between 35mm and 85mm are best, anything wider than 35mm would be too wide.
Something Slightly Candid
As always I take my camera out with me when I go to dinner, this time was no different. We went to a restaurant called Bar Italia and funny enough, I didn’t get any photos of the food! Once my food arrived, I couldn’t help but eat so didn’t get any photos of that… I did however capture a few images which can be seen below.
As I was waiting in line, I captured the image above and the Eye AF did an amazing job. I didn’t realize but I was actually dragging the shutter quite a bit (only 1/40th sec exposure) so I’m lucky they turned out decently sharp and the subject was standing still.
The same goes for the below image. I still really like the rending this RF 35mm produces and although an f/1.4 would always be nice, I don’t really feel the need right now. I have continued to use Luminosity masks when editing and these images were no different.
I’ve also been waiting to visit some of the parks to try get some more bird shots for the 100-400mm review but sadly we haven’t had that great weather so that has held me back from shooting more. I have gone from shooting completely indoors to only wanting to shoot outside so quite a difference. Once I do manage to get out, I’ll be sure to share the images here.
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