Certain things should not be done while operating a moving vehicle.
One is shoot photos out the windows.
A second might be…
So, I guess two rules are being broken here.
What makes it worse is I waited until the next stoplight and shot a few with the Leica, too.
What, is he going to see me do it?
And just so that one isn’t so lonely…
Something about that shot speaks loneliness to me. I don’t know why. Maybe it was because of the way the waitress acted. She seemed as if she was lonely. Kinda detached a bit. Not rude or not mean or anything… just… lonely. You know those people who you can just tell she needed a hug or somebody to talk to, maybe.
But, also, if you haven’t noticed already, if you hover the mouse over a photo for a second or two, the photo info comes up – exposure and camera info and such. Just for the nerdy types or if you wonder “how did he do that”.
Also, you might be curious to know, I’ve been shooting Aperture Priority almost exclusively now. When I was overseas, I shot in nothing but full manual. And of course, its like riding a bike, you don’t lose that skill… being able to adjust settings without taking your face off the camera and subconsciously counting clicks and knowing how far however many stops you need to adjust.
But in Aperture Priority, I honestly have been practicing it quite a bit since I’ve been shooting news stuff. It allows me just as much control over a situation as I always would have with Manual.
“But how can that be!? If the camera is making the decisions more?” you ask.
Well, yeah, it helps out as far as being able to switch from full sun to shade to cloudy to indoors extremely quickly and very reliably… but I maintain final say. On the top of the camera, the +/- compensation… I still rule: the top photo is +0.3 because otherwise it would underexpose a touch because of the darkness of the inside of my car and the blackness of the other car. I kept the whole thing nice even if it did desaturate the sky a touch. The bottom second photo is a completely different animal. A full -1.0. But ONLY -1.0. Why not isn’t it -2.0 or more since everything IS silhouetted? Because the light coming through the window was going to be freaking out the meter a bit anyway, but the ever-faithful metering system will see that smaller door and still try to make the interior of the restaurant exposed properly… but just barely. It’ll still be pretty dark. SOOOO… to kill it the rest of the way, all it takes is -1.0. A full -2.0 would start to make the outside even underexpose. And then you’d lose the subtle little details of the restaurant… like the people sitting closer and the windows on the left and the nice glossy table and the exit sign. Honestly things that don’t matter too much, but I wanted SOME semblance of place… not just a completely black silhouette in front of a window.
So, that’s that.
Too much information, I know, but I just wanted to write a bit about making photos INTENTIONALLY. That little green box or “Auto” setting on the camera is nice and everything, but its honestly kinda sucky. The camera can only do so much.
Alright. I’m a nerd. Moving on.
Stay tuned, though… they always won’t be like this… 🙂
-Noah D.
