In the blink of an eye

I am more and more looking for surreal pictures, let you guess as much as possible. I was in Antwerp last week, and the light was great, so I visited the stairs at the MAS there. Always good for few shots. I worked on some shots featuring people in front of the transparent walls, but I got only more-or-less ordinary shots, nothing that really popped-out. And then I saw these two. The story is all yours :-)

I have this slumbering project on beach resorts, I guess this one will be part of that. Again, I am not sure I want to discuss what we are looking at. Let's just say I took a few pictures of this. Quiet surreal. Technically not much to add, I exposed for the shadows, and maybe even a little too much, the grain is a little excessive for this film + developer combination.

I think a photograph should tell a story, should be more then just pleasing to the eye. Even better, for me the story is much more important. I am done with simple pleasing pictures, like Blue 'n White and some other previous posts. I want to challenge my viewers to invent their own story, get the imagination to work. This is a nice example. I won't even start to explain to you what I see here, you can make that up for yourself. I also believe in adding layers to a picture, having things happening at several places. Not easy, but very rewarding when you get it right. That means that you can look several times at a photograph and discover something extra from time to time. That also worked for me, here. Also, I don't think anyone with a bit of artistic ambition is ever 100% satisfied. That would kill the process. We never create the work that does it all, has it all. For me, there are some flaws here too, something to impro...

I don't think I am going to tell you what you are looking at. The what was there, but the how , not that simple. There was not much light, and I needed some depth of field to make both foreground and background recognisable, meaning a relative long exposure, even at ISO 400. Not sure what the actual combination was, I think f8 at 1/2 second or something like that. I used my monopod to handle the long exposure, giving me enough support to prevent the camera from shaking. A real life-saver sometimes, a nice lightweight although unstable platform. Unstable as in riding a motorcycle, part of the experience, just something to get used to. Obviously the image at the bottom, the crossing and the light on top had to be in the picture, but should not be blocked by the window, and with a Leica, that's not so easily achieved because of the so called lens parallax, in short the fact that you are not looking through the lens that will make the picture. In this case th...

The light was magnificent, low evening sun, full of promise. I knew there where great pictures in the air, I only had to grab them. Only. In conditions like that I become very focussed, single minded and unsocial. There are pictures to be found, never mind the rest. While climbing the escalator, I saw these women coming down, I had no time to set anything, I just raised the camera and clicked. Mind you, this is an M6, no Auto-anything as we know it today (but a lot of automation in it's days LOL). I always pre-set my exposure to a setting that more-or-less suits the environment I am in, and sometimes a zone-focussing distance, but not this time. You can see that the girl in the center is out of focus, the focus seems to be set to a greater distance, look at the person in the back. Probably ∞ . But all that technical bla is completely irrelevant here. See & Shoot, think later. I love this picture, it is a direction of style I would like to go to. For me, ...

Sometimes it can be difficult to decide when to click. The picture itself is there in your mind. You know the 'what', the sentiment you want to capture. But when.. The lines, the people, the technical stuff on the ceiling, not difficult to see. But there would be a lot of people in the frame, and they should be, but which one to choose as main actor, what expression or movement or silhouette to wait for? In the end, I took a few different frames, concentrating on the woman a little to the right of the centre, sitting next to the window. Exposure was a little tricky, I wanted to show the world outside the window, silhouette the people, but at the same time I wanted to keep as much of the inside of the room visible. I measured for the foreground, the table and the floor, reasoning that the film would be able to capture the lighter parts. This might not work so well with digital, but film has an astonishing ability to capture the lighter parts. The o...

I don't fancy a description to accompany a picture, this is not journalism. I prefer to let the viewer work it out. But in this case the why does have an added value. This is at the Making of Harry Potter Studio Tour, near London, just before entering the actual studio. Enough said. Technically, another challenge, I had to react super quickly, he just popped in view, looking like he did, so I just snapped. Hence the tilted frame etc. Never mind, content always wins over technique in my view.

When taking pictures during a day, either working on a story or just visiting an unknown place, I have a tendency to take less and less pictures. Creating photographs takes a lot of energy, but so does moving through an unknown place, or city, or environment, interacting with your surroundings, getting fed in time, moving from one location to another, you get the idea. In other words, I get tired. Very tired, and often much too tired to continue taking meaningful pictures. I just can't be bothered anymore. Not a big deal when I take pictures for my own fun, but it becomes a problem when I have to deliver something at the end. I will force myself to keep working, but only to find out that the quality is not really there anymore. I am just too tired. The above picture was taken with the beautiful Leica Elmarit 2.8/135mm. Not too bad a picture, not all that special either. And the only picture I took with that lens during the entire day. I carried over 700 gr. of lens...

While doing some shopping and taking care of things we had to do, I was busy taking pictures. The world of train stations is allways an intriguing place for me, a lot of people things happening. I noticed this woman at a ticket machine, and the light from the display reflected on her face. I always set my exposure as soon as I find myself in a photographable place, so I just had to focus and pick the right moment. I took two pictures of her, the second one was right. Looking back, it might have been even better if I would have moved a fraction more to the right, to see a little more of her face reflected in the machine, but I am not sure we would still see the girl in the background like we do now. There is already a lot happening when you make the picture, your technique, her expression, the composition, the background, the best moment, mostly all by instinct, but a conscious decision at the same time. A wonderful process. This is so good about a camera wit...

We are working on a long-term project concerning  shipping, I won't elaborate too much on that, nothing solid yet, but this photograph is part of that project, as an example of the style we might want to achieve. What I want to show here is how this particular lens, the Carl Zeiss Biogon ZM 2.0/35mm, works in this kind of light. First of all, the lens is superb. No need for the boring details, but I love it. A lens is all about character. I don't care if one lens is sharper then another one, or how much coma is left in the corners at a specific aperture. Boring data. In photography, it is all about prediction. You want to predict what is going to happen next in order to be ready to actually capture that moment. If not, you will be too late, you missed the moment. Your camera must be ready to capture the instance. Prepared, ready, focused, exposure set, in front of your eye, you know the drill. You must be able to predict the near fu...

      Finaly another post after some months. It took a while because I changed my approach to photography, and I had to learn part of the trade again. I bought myself an old and cheap Leica M6 (cheap for Leica standards) from Germany, found a nice Carl Zeiss Biogon 35mm in Japan, had the camera overhauled at the factory (not cheap by any standard) and started shooting film again. And I love every second of it. I love the basic simplicity of a film camera. Shutterspeed, aperture, focus. That's it. Why the Leica? I adore viewfinder camera's (as opposed to a reflex), because you are not distracted by the process of focusing. You look through the viewfinder and everything is clear, in focus. You can concentrate on content. With these cameras you are forced to prepare your shot, have everything ready before you can take whatever shot you have in mind. Anticipate. Prepare your exposure, focus ... and wait for the moment, let things unfold in front of y...