First photo walk of 2013

I took my first photo walk in 2013 on the first weekend of the year to kick off 2013 with a bang. This is the first time I am shooting on the street since my last walk in late September.

For the past few months, I have been busy with portrait shoots. I enjoy working with models and makeup artists to create photos. However, my schedule and that of the models only allowed us to shoot on Sundays. My other day off for my current roster is on Mondays . I avoid shooting on the streets on Monday due to less crowds walking about in town. I’ve tried shooting on Mondays in the past and I could hardly find people to shoot along Orchard Road.

That said, I am looking into shooting at other locations that tourists would go to. I hope to find interesting subjects at those places. My Sundays have been fully booked for the rest of the month. So I need to find time to allow me to continue shooting street photography regularly.

At Charlie Kirk‘s encouragement, I‘ll be shooting with a wider focal length. I‘ll be using the Ricoh GRD III and the Fujifilm X100 as they have the effective focal length of 28mm and 35mm respectively. I might shoot with the AF-D 35mm f/2 on the D700 when I get the lens back from my brother but I would prefer to shoot at that focal length on the Leica M8. That would mean getting a wider lens and most probably a viewfinder for accurate framing.

Not a great shot but I want to highlight the purple fringing. I get it quite a lot when I shoot on the Voigtlander 35mm Nokton f/1.4  Classic SC. The only way around this is seems to be avoiding sudden transitions from light to dark in the shot or converting the shot to black and white. I can’t seem to correct the chromatic aberration in Lightroom. Leave a comment if you know a solution to this other than using a better lens.

Left: This is the first stranger I shot in 2013. Very interesting appearance but she was quite shy.

Right: The second stranger in the year. She’s a friend of the previous girl. I was able to chat with her a bit more and position her to get the catch-lights in her eyes and use the stairs in the background as leading lines.

Left: I wonder what error 99 is.

Right: I came across a two man crew filming along Orchard Road.

It‘s quite a challenge to shoot in Orchard Road on a Sunday. While there is the busy background on the street, having so many people walking around meant that they would inadvertently walk into the frame.

The actresses were pretty interesting. I could tell from their looks that they were sisters but they looked like they could even bee triplets. Each had their other half, the three guys in the background. I wonder if these guys were really their partners or merely fellow actors.

Left: Smart phone photography with style.

Right: This guy was shooting with a digital compact camera. He also had a Sprocket Rocket and a Fisheye Baby.

These two girls were wearing identical clothing except for their belts and shoes. I wonder if they wore that out of a close friendship or if that was their uniform.

Focusing on a particular theme or subject can help you to spot interesting things to photograph. However, in this shot, I noticed their identical clothing and ended up missing the lady in blue in the background. She was walking so fast that by the time I saw her, she had walked past me.

It‘s not the first time that I have seen these peculiar shades.

I was joined by my new friend Aaron.

My friend Valerie, who introduced Aaron to me. She likes to take photos of children and they really enjoy being photographed by this friendly stranger.

It was a pity that I was not able to shoot along Orchard Road during the Christmas holidays. It is a very good time to shoot street photography but I had other work scheduled for the whole of December.

I ended up taking a lot less photos than I would have preferred but I had a feeling that this would happen. Having not shot on the streets for a few months, I find that it takes me a while to get into the rhythm and even then it is a far cry from how I shot back in September.

There are a few other projects that I need to work on in the next couple of months so that would mean having to juggle street photography along with these projects. Chinese New Year is just around the corner and that would take up at least half of February. It does give me the opportunity to capture candid shots of my big extended family. So regardless of the genre, I will keep shooting. That is the only way to get better.