Two Things at Once

Jumping into this weekend, I had a bunch of things to be excited for. The weather had just started to pick up, I finally felt like the world was working with me for once. I also had recently gotten a few new toys; a new portrait lens and a flash attachment. This weekend experience required a lot of adjusting on my part.

For the first time ever I could photograph without gloves. While still requiring a few layers (personally), I could feel one with my tools. There were so many more people out this time around, I knew I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. I could sense everyone was having a great time, inherently so did I.

Having not used either of the two beforehand, I figured I could challenge myself to calibrate my style using both. For my portrait lens, a 35mm f/1.7 (aka 52mm), it was a noticeably tighter view than I was accustomed to. The focus range for this focal length is also a lot tighter and less forgiving than I had expected, even at f/11! I missed focus quite a bit that day.

When I opened up the lens all the way to f/1.7 I hadn’t realized my focus length dropped all the way down to 2 inches! I think I got people’s shoulder more in focus than their face in focus lol.

My flash, a Godox it32, literally came in the night before! I took a few test shots, but shooting in my dark apartment was never going to compare with challenging the sun the following day.

While my knowledge of photographers is more limited than I would care to admit, the photographs of Bruce Gilden, Tatsuo Suzuki, Gary Winogrand, and even Trevor Wisecup really introduced me to the world of flash photography.

While a lot of my style has been without the use of flash, I did have a moment right before I moved were I was shooting a Tailgate event and it started to rain. While some looked for shelter, many embraced the rain and that was something I wasn’t to pass up even if it risked damaging my camera. I used the pop up flash of my camera to compensate for how dark it had gotten. To my surprise the flash had such a unique effect with freezing the rain and how it separated subjects. I think from that moment, the idea of shooting flash was something I wanted to perfect.

The only problem with flash is that once I choose to hit the shutter, everyone and their mom would know what I was doing. While I don’t take pride in secretly taking people’s photos, there’s a window of opportunity where they don’t know I’m there and the moment stays undisturbed. I even have the chance to take multiple images and time to line up the image before I overstep or they take notice. But with flash, it calls so much attention to itself that moments tend to die right in that second.

And while I do like interacting with my subjects, the way many people begin to “act” when they know they’re being watched (more than they already are in public) is another layer of dishonesty that I don’t care to capture. There are special cases where the flash doesn’t break people’s stride.

I think I’ll use the two things separately next time. Not to say they won’t meet again, but I want to give them my full individual focus. I hope to see this energy carry over to the next weekends. I’m excited to attend Boston Marathon in a few days. Fingers crossed!