Manchester photo walk : obeying the Fitbit
Manchester:Rain Tends to go hand in hand. So as a photographer, when we are chained to the desk editing, marketing and updating our countless different social media networks, the rain doesn’t bother us, sorry.
But when you look out in a morning and the sun is peeking out, skies are blue, being tied to a desk is no fun. Fortunately, being your own boss means you can sometimes shuffle work to suit ! Now is the time to take the odd ‘me’ day. Once wedding season is in full swing…it won’t matter how nice the day looks there’s always weddings to be edited, albums to be designed, Pinterest boards to be updated and weddings to shoot.
Plus the god that is Fitbit, also needs her (mines female) pound of flesh every day. So the options are edit/blog/marketing and use the treadmill or pop out somewhere nice and grab a few photo’s whilst getting my 10k steps in.
I went out.
To be fair, whilst it may seem like I’m skiving, photography is good for the soul. I like to set myself challenges when going out. Some days it may be photograph the colour ‘red’…so every picture has to have something to do or include red in it. Other days it may be people, buildings etc.
Today I wanted to a) get my 10,000 steps in (priority 1;-) ) b) Use one lens with a fixed aperture c) Try and Geotag the photo’s from the walk
a) The 10,000 steps was easy, at the last count I’m good for about 14,000. When you are wandering around Manchester camera in hand, the miles pass by easily. A lot better than on the treadmill.
b) One lens with a fixed aperture is good for your creativity. No faff, no messing with lots of kit. My choice today was a Fuji X-H1 camera with a Fuji 35mm f2 lens. All the photo’s were taken as JPGS, in Fuji’s Classic Chrome picture profile. The joy of these walks means getting out from the computer. So, apart for the odd one being cropped, there’s no editing done, what we call SOC [straight out of camera]…otherwise I may have well stayed on the computer.
c) The Fuji H-X1 is Fuji’s latest professional camera and has Bluetooth and wi-fi built in. It doesn’t have GPS built in, but by linking it to their App on a GPS enabled phone GEO tagging is meant to be possible. By GEO tagging the photo’s when they are imported into my editing software [Lightroom] it allows me to see where the photo was taken. Google also like GEO tagged photo’s so win win. It unfortunately doesn’t quite work the way i wanted/expected it too, so will have to come up with a plan b. It will only tag the location when I open the App on the phone and tell the camera to receive the location coordinates, which is fine if you are stood in the same location, but not, if off out walking. I’ll be emailing Fuji to see if it can be added as a firmware fix.
The ‘E’ is for another photo project I need the whole alphabet…
I was good and walked on by…
The camera had lost the link for the GPS again at this point. So it was relinked.
Manchester’s very own steam vent, not quite the same as New York, but I’ll take it ! I’ve never noticed this before, the next wedding I have at The Midland Hotel…I will be using this !
Battery change: The Fuji X-H1 has kept the same battery as the XT2, which is great because I have lot’s. But, they don’t last as long so you need spares.
How many people does it take to fix a traffic light? Three. One to fix it and two to be checking their phones. You’d of thought that one of them could ‘foot’ the ladder.
You don’t see many Bowler hatted cigar smoking people around Manchester. Very dapper !
That’s a lot of glass to clean. This was taken from a long way away. I had a fixed 35mm (50mm full frame equivalent) lens so you need to back away to get it all in the frame. I decided to ‘bend’ my normal rules and took a few shots closer up, with a view to ‘stitch’ them together when back on the computer.19 pictures were taken. All in manual exposure. Manual white balance. This makes it easier for the software to ‘stitch’ the pictures together. The photo below is the result. It is a very large file and has lot’s of detail. Breaking my no editing rule, but to be fair the software did a great job automatically and I didn’t do anything ! A bit like a digital jigsaw.
I was passing a van…this chap had been left inside to safeguard it’s contents.
Once the files from the walk have been imported into Lightroom, they should get placed on a map so that I can see exactly where they were taken. Unfortunately, it didn’t work as planned and it looks like I took all of the photos in 6 different spots. The next plan will be better !
Gear for the photowalk. Fuji X-H1 camera, Hardgraft leather handstrap, Fuji 35mm f/2 lens, Apple iPhone 6 and a Spider Black Widow. [This is looped onto your belt so that your camera can be attached] i used about 1 and a half batteries, which is not bad.
This gear photo was taken with a Fuji X-T2 and 7Artisans manual lens. [The review for the 7Artisans lens is on my todo list] If you are after gear reviews they are here More from my personal blog here and the wedding blog is here.
