Rodney Campbell's Blog

I’ve decided to take up the 52/2011 challenge for this year. The idea of which is to undertake a year long challenge and post at least a photo a week on a particular topic or theme.

For my challenge I’d already been thinking back in January about getting out of my comfort zone and practicing a style of photography known as “Street Photography”. Some of you are probably already aware I’ve essentially been trying this since the start of the year however I’m going to more formalise it through the 52/2011 and keep the flow (and hopefully growth) in one thread.

I work in Sydney’s CBD so this location should hopefully provide a wealth of early morning, lunchtime and late afternoon subject matter for those times I can get out to try my hand.

One possible misconception is that street photography is the photographing of empty streets – perhaps a better term for this class of photography would be social, ‘in the moment’ or ‘real life reportage’ photography – it’s photographing people in their natural environments.

Street photography seems to have had a bit of a resurgence lately and apparently 🙂 it can be quite exciting – you can go around in public and take pictures of (gasp) strangers!

For me I see a few main areas of potential growth for myself including:
– the obvious things like ability to compose and shoot quickly, to look and notice more about whats going on around me, to see and anticipate ‘moments’, train the eye, camera handling and familiarity – all useful skills for most other photographic disciplines
– post processing skills – as I’ll be processing most images to monochrome there are many and varied techniques and “looks” for doing this
– overcoming shyness, building the self confidence to eventually walk up to strangers and (ask!! to) take their photo
– patience 🙂

I hope by the end of the year to be comfortable in both main approaches to street photography: Candid – capturing the moment spontaneously, without asking subjects to pose for you and without them being aware of you doing so and Conversational – where you engage the subject beforehand, striking up a conversation, getting to know them and their personality and asking their permission before taking any photos.

My aim is to post at least a couple images a week for your viewing pleasure/comment/criticism or even unrestrained laughter 🙂

A few more street photography images from some lunchtime sessions in the city – whereas most of my other street images were taken with a wide angle lens (17-50mm) I thought I’d try going out with a long lens (my Nikon 70-300mm which is a very nice and sharp lens, however it isn’t anywhere near as fast as my f/2.8 lens). It’s interesting being forced to take all shots using just the one lens and with street photography you wouldn’t get the chance to change lenses anyway before the moment is lost. You have to move around a lot more to prepare for and compose your shots.

Note: These images (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger – so click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay gallery viewer.

I saw these three characters together waiting at the intersection on the other side of the road so I waited till they started crossing towards me and…

Rockin’ the Sixties

NIKON D90 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 230 mm, 1/200 sec at f / 5.3, ISO 200

These shoes were just artsy indulgence but I also really liked them from the moment I saw them walking down the street – I was just glad she had to stop at the lights which gave me time to shoot

Standing

NIKON D90 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 230 mm, 1/80 sec at f / 5.3, ISO 400

This last is a Diptych of two images taken of a gentleman down on his luck keeling right on on the kerb on the corner of George and Park streets in front of the Queen Victoria Building

Please

NIKON D90 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 240 mm, 1/160 sec at f / 5.6, ISO 400

I’ve been planning to try some evening light trails (car lights) images for some time so on the weekend my eldest daughter and I travelled down to the Gore Hill Freeway here in Sydney to take some images at sunset and twilight.

We’d previously scoped out a likely position on an overpass close to the Channel Nine tower (which we’d planned to have in the shot as well).

The basic process for taking photographs of light trails (car lights) is to:

• Use a Tripod – we are going to be dealing with long exposures so we need stability
• Use a remote/cable release or self timer – as above we want no camera shake – I used my Nikon wireless remote
• Use a low ISO – we are going to have long exposures so we want to limit noise by using a low ISO
• Manual Focus – it will be dark so it might be easier to manual focus – my autofocus worked fine with my fast f/2.8 lens – except when I was using the 10 stop ND
• Use a Shutter Speed of at least around 10 to 20 seconds – this provides enough time for the lights to move through the image producing lines of light (the trails)
• Use an Aperture setting in the f/8 to f/16 range for good depth of field – if you want even more of a starburst effect from any fixed lights in the image (e.g. streetlights) then use a smaller aperture like f/22+
• Watch your Highlights to ensure important details don’t get overexposed

Note: These images (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger – so click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay gallery viewer.

This shot is facing west towards the sunset at 7:28PM – truth be told this shot was my daughters idea 🙂

All that is Golden

NIKON D90 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 40 mm, 1/200 sec at f / 11, ISO 200

This image was taken facing east away from the now set sun using a 10 stop ND filter (which reduces the incoming light by 1000 times) which allowed the excessively long exposure time at sunset – I actually had to open up to f/8 because I didn’t fancy waiting for an 8 minute exposure.

Dark Trails

NIKON D90 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm, 221 sec at f / 8.0, ISO 200 + ND3.0

This image was taken using a variable neutral density filter at perhaps only a couple of stops of light reduction after sunset (7:53PM).

Trails

NIKON D90 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm, 30 sec at f / 11, ISO 200 + FaderND

Finally the culmination of our efforts – this image was taken towards the now set sun (8:06PM) and it was now dark enough to take a normal exposure without filters.

Twilight Trails

NIKON D90 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 25 mm, 10 sec at f / 16, ISO 200

On the weekend my eldest daughter and I visited the Kirribilli Markets – which is held on the fourth Saturday of the month at Bradfield Park, on the corner of Alfred St and Burton St, Milsons Point, just outside Milsons Point Station (basically just under the Sydney Harbour Bridge on the north side).

Whilst we were there along with browsing the food and wares we took a walk across the bridge and also grabbed some street images.

Note: These images (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger – so click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay gallery viewer.

Just as we were coming back down the stairs up to the pedestrian walkway across the Sydney Harbour Bridge I spotted this young lady heading up the stairs and waited for the right moment and composition with a long lens.

NIKON D90 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 200 mm, 1/1600 sec at f / 5.3, ISO 200

It was a very sunny and hot day at the open air Kirribilli Markets and there were lots of women toting umbrellas as shade from the sun – I took a number of umbrella shots and I liked the feeling of this composition.

NIKON D90 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 180 mm, 1/1000 sec at f / 5.0, ISO 200

Lastly an image of my daughter at the midway point on the bridge with our cakes (which we ate momentarily 🙂 ).

NIKON D90 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 230 mm, 1/250 sec at f / 5.3, ISO 200

There are a number of shipwrecks in Homebush Bay, here in Sydney near the olympic village.

A friend from work and I had been interested for some time in taking some photos there – specifically the wreck of the SS Ayrfield.

We finally got organised enough to go and take the images one evening. Most people appear to photograph the wrecks either during the day or at sunrise (where the sun will rise almost directly behind the SS Ayrfield). Since we didn’t fancy getting there at some insane time in the morning we decided to give sunset and twilight a try. There is unfortunately a large multistorey apartment block right on the waters edge which blocks the late and setting sun so we knew the ship would be in shadow before and during the actual sunset.

Note: These images (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger – so click any of the images below to see larger versions in an inline overlay gallery viewer.

This first image was taken before sunset (7:20PM) – we had fantastic dramatic skies from a storm rolling past and beautiful golden light on the buildings in the distance.

Days Like This:

NIKON D90 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 29 mm, 1/60 sec at f / 11, ISO 200

The next image was actually taken before sunset as well (about 15 minutes before sunset at 7:30PM). This very long exposure was possible because I made use of a 10 stop (1000x reduction in light) neutral density filter which allowed the two minute exposure during daylight.

Lavender Ghost:

NIKON D90 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 31 mm, 123 sec at f / 11, ISO 200 + ND3.0

The following two very long exposures were taken well after sunset during and just after twilight (8:16PM and 8:23PM)

Blue Ayrfield:

NIKON D90 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 22 mm, 123 sec at f / 16, ISO 200

Something a little different with this next image (besides the very long exposure) is that we light painted the right hand side of the ship (which was dark and in shadow) with a dolphin torch to give a bit more detail on that side. The left side of the ship and the mangroves on the far right are lit by a fixed tungsten spotlight that they have lighting the ship at night.

Ayrfield Shine:

NIKON D90 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 26 mm, 239 sec at f / 13, ISO 200