Nikon D200 28mm 5.0s @ f/7.1

How about some street photography?

This is in Paris, August of 2008.

On one of my last nights there, I make my way to the Montmartre, hoping to get one of those cool fine art photos of the long stairways. While I do have a few of those attempts at fine art, I found this image to be the coolest. I mean, how often do you see a firedancer just down the steps of the Sacré Cœur? For all I knew, he might have been there every night. Hmm…but, this was fresh and exciting to me! In any case, I plopped my camera on a beanbag-like camera support called The Pod (since I didn’t bring a real tripod), and draaagged the shutter.

Hasselblad H3DII-31 1/320s f/11, filled with Hensel Porty with softbox

I’ve been procrastinating on images I shot on Memorial Day weekend. Yes, May. And this is one of many.

As you know, I was experimenting with the Hasselblad on Memorial Day weekend. This was the second shoot that I scheduled. I was hoping to tell the story of Brandon and his adventures as an urban bicycle commuter. I had big plans of rolling/tracking shots, and perhaps some stunts. Well, first off, the Hasselblad’s tracking focus isn’t very good, and the shutter lag basically made it nearly impossible. Well, and I didn’t want to break Brandon’s neck. So, after a revision of plans, and lunch at Perry’s, I had Brandon strike a pose around various spots along the Embarcadero.

The day was actually overcast, so we had really soft light all around. Cloud cover did change throughout the day, which had me switching settings up and down and around. I had a Hensel Porty 1200 pack with a Chimera XS soft box just for a bit of pop on Brandon. I probably would’ve needed it more if I was trying to balance for bright skies. To tell you the truth, it was dialed down quite a bit. I have no idea if it did anything.

Big ups to Brandon, Quin, and Van that made this shoot possible.

Chase Jarvis talks about a cycle of Create=>Share=>Sustain in this talk to the Art Director’s Club of Denver.  I’m not going to get into the details of his talk too much, you have the video for that. How it relates to me, however, I feel I create and sustain a fair amount, though I don’t share very much. Why did I seek to become a photographer in the first place? To take cool pictures, sure. But, also to *connect* to others through imagery.

And, why do I have this blog? Sure, Photoshelter would say it’s an SEO machine. Ultimately, it’s an outlet for me to share whatever’s going on creatively, technically, or whatever. A recent criticism from my brother pointed out that he wanted to see more of my work. That was the subtle wakeup call I needed. So, I’m going to start making an effort here by starting small: One image, twice a week. Today I share an image I took when I was out and about in San Francisco a few weeks ago. No story, just a photo of my coffee.

Blue Bottle Coffee Gibraltars @ Piccino