August.
What a busy month! I mean good busy, but busy.
Our daughter has her birthday, five already, WOW! (and I have my birthday – never you mind how old ;-))
Plus she is off school, and August tends to be a month that my partner is inundated with work. So it tends to be a lot of my daughter and me time.
Beautiful time.
But less photography time.
So, when the first clear schedule day in about three weeks opened up, I couldn’t resist the lure of a day out with my camera.
As you’ll know if you’re a regular reader, I’ve supplemented my X-Pro2 with an X-Pro1.
So for my day out in town I decided to pair the X-Pro1 with it’s original soul mate, the XF35/F1.4 and hit the streets.
As we all know the X-Pro1 is a slow and clunky camera and the XF35/F1.4 is not the fastest AF lens (although I tend to use my Fujifilm cameras in manual focus)
Also, our perception of speed changes as we acclimatise no?
20 years ago a supercar could make 300 horsepower and be awe inspiring. Now that’s the ball park of a ‘hot hatch‘ and a genuine supercar makes upwards of 600BHP
Likewise if you thought your X-T1 made the X-Pro1 feel slow and clunky, the original X camera feels even slower and more clunky after using the X-Pro2
I digress….
I was in no rush I just wanted to be outside with a camera, I wanted to shoot some street maybe grab a new street portrait and simply have some re-acquainting time with the X-Pro1
So like that post I wrote all the months ago, (see here) the one when I took you on a 10+ mile walk through the city of Porto; today’s piece will be about an afternoon out with one body, one lens and one goal:
An enjoyable day of personal photography.
So as always when we go out and shoot a lot of pictures, they’re not all going to be portfolio grade (if any at all), they’ll more likely be a record of that day.
So with that in mind I’m going to do something with the shots from that day, something that I wouldn’t typically do.
I’m going to present all of them to you in black and white!
Despite it being summer. It was a grey and overcast day. Despite it being August, the streets weren’t as rammed with tourists as they usually are at this time of year (probably because of the threat of rain)
However, the city wasn’t devoid of tourists, taking a break and consulting a map. Central Porto’s fairly small, and intriguing to explore. Just keep walking is the best way in my view!
I headed to one of my favourite spots, Mercado do Bolhão. Even here things seemed (within context) strangely quiet and a little empty.
These stairs are usually much busier than this, and would be a lot harder to get some quiet smart phone time on!
One of the reasons I keep coming back to this location is that (as well as liking it and the photo opportunities it presents) by continuously re-visiting the same place I have a strong base line to judge images against one another, not to mention the challenge of finding new angles and revisiting old ones
The sign on the wall means “down” 🙂 Well at least their reflection is heading in the correct direction
I’ve been shooting from the hip using a zone focus a lot lately. Sometimes that works out better than others… This wasn’t the best result!
I decided that if I was on the tourist route, that I might as well go ‘all in’ and visit São Bento Railway Station!
After I stopped for a café break the threat of rain dissipated, the sun came out and the streets started to fill up.
And you know what? I decided that was the time to call it a day. Within a few minutes Porto would be heaving under the weight of a typical August sun, the streets would be cluttered to breaking point by map wielding visitors, and it would all be just like any other summer’s day.
So I’m rather glad that my atypical August day off just happened to coincide with a slightly atypical day in town, which gave me a different angle to take pictures.
I hope you enjoyed it too. Colour photography will (probably) return next week 🙂
======================================
A lot of time and effort goes into this site.. Hopefully it’s helped you? Perhaps you’d consider helping me?
One way you could help me is if you want to buy from Amazon, if you do so using the links below, then I will receive a small percentage of your expenditure, and you will pay NO MORE than you would have paid anyway.
Shop at Amazon USA
Fujifilm X-Pro2
Shop at Amazon UK
Fujifilm X-Pro2
If there’s a different product you’re considering, then perhaps you’d drop me a line and I can send you an associate link for it?
Another way you could help, is by making a donation. The donate button can be found on the link below
Thank You Very Much!
======================================
The X-Pro Series Content: Referenced and All In One Place
The X-Pro Series Content: A Contents Page with Page Numbers and a Brief Description
Adam Bonn Fotografia 