All of the following images were taken with my X100f Fuji camera in Bristol. I’d just come back from a trip to Glasgow and had a fantastic time there. I’d taken my X100f with me but to be honest I was quite disappointed with the results i.e I’d got too many failures. I was with my wife, brother and sister in law so perhaps I hadn’t considered accurately what I was trying to achieve photographically. I’m not saying that you can’t use the X100f as a point and shoot camera but at the end of the day a camera is just a machine and not intelligent. So spurred on by my dismal results I headed out to Bristol from my home in South Wales for a few hours of more careful shooting.
I’d decided to change a few things, firstly to shoot primarily in B&W (Acros Red) with RAW for Back up and more importantly to take much more care with my exposures, focusing and composition. I think that I see things differently when shooting in B&W significantly in terms of shapes/patterns and contrast. I also made the decision to shoot mostly in manual mode. In Glasgow I’d used various types of auto or semi-auto modes. I think this last decision has proved to be the most important.
The lighting in both cities was similar, very bright and high contrast. In Bristol I took much more care with highlights. I find that exposing for highlights is preferable mostly. I find that shadow detail is often much easier to recover in most circumstances.
99% of the time I never ask permission to take a photograph but for the photograph above I did ask, mainly because I received such a terrible frown from this lady I thought it only polite to ask. She was lovely and agreed straight away. I felt obliged to try her Goat Curry which was delicious.
Outside of the market I choose not to fight the contrasty light but rather to exaggerate its effect. You just have to think in simple terms of light and shadow.
