Travel is great, but one thing it does is eat up time. I've been fortunate enough to travel quite a bit in the last few weeks, which has provided some very interesting scenes for my photography and general interest. However, going to work immediately after returning from any trip, and then embarking on another the following weekend, has meant that I have something of a backlog of photos. I could post a photo per day, but I like to waffle, and so fewer posts with more photos allows me time to think about what I want to say. The issue with such a process is that when time is short, I cannot easily publish posts. I could change the format, or just upload the photos themselves without the waffle. I'm not sure yet. Either way, dear reader, please know that I am taking photos most of the time. I have lenses yet to review, some to sell, and others on my shopping list, so stay tuned.
This set of photos is from Vienna. I'd split the previous Vienna sets based on lens usage, but now I am back to another lens that I'm pleased I added to the stable; the C/Y mount Carl Zeiss Distagon 28mm F2.8. I thought I would use this post to explain what I wanted to do and how I did it, with each shot.
I very much enjoy shooting with manual focus lenses, though sometimes I do appreciate modern conveniences such as autofocus and optical stabilisation. I needed neither for the above shot; I prefocussed and set the shutter to freeze the motion of the horses. I was very pleased with my timing on this one, as they were cantering pretty quickly.
For this shot, framing was key. I was less concerned with shutter speed, and set the ISO to its base level, and aperture to f/4. There was a huge contrast in this scene, but I liked how the highlights are retained enough to look almost film-like, yet they are blown within the sky light. This was intentional - I shot at EV+2 as the camera was trying to balance out the frame.
I think this is f/8 or f/11, but I am not sure. It certainly seems to be—the sun is pointed at the camera at base ISO yet the shutter speed is only 1/800s. I wanted to have the whole scene in focus here; bokeh is lovely but can detract from a scene if overused. It's nice to be able to wander all over a scene and take in various pieces one moment at a time.
It was at this statue that a couple asked me to take their photograph. I did so, and they were extremely pleased with the result, which was nice! I crouched down to ensure that their whole bodies and the entire statue were in frame—no-one's head was cut off!
For my shot, I wanted to have the statue as a silhouette, with a sunstar at the centre of the frame. The nice clouds were icing on the cake.
There was quite a strong wind at the time, and once again, I set a high shutter speed to freeze the motion of the flags. A high f-number kept the entire scene in focus, which I thought was important, given the framing.
For this final scene, I was amazed at the gold colour of the buildings owed to the reflected light (and their yellow paint). My main challenge here was to avoid the busy street below, so I tilted the camera upwards slightly. I stood almost in the centre of the road, to balance the frame evenly, and took the shot.
I hope the walk through the process and motivation for each shot was a little interesting—hopefully more so than just a slideshow...