LEIDEN

So, I wanna be a photographer.
I mean, seriously. I want to be one.
My first step to achieving that is taking more pictures. It sounds obvious, but it makes sense. Really.

What I mean is not taking more pictures per "session", I do take a lot of pics every time I head outside with my camera. What I mean is that I need to go outside and look for the pictures more often.
It's super easy to take nice pictures when you are out on holidays. The trick is to try and produce a good picture every week. Even in those uneventful weeks where seemingly nothing happens.
It's a bit like writing. It's easy sitting down and retelling a funny story that happened to you. The difficulty comes in writing regularly, even when [apparently] nothing out of the ordinary has happened to you.

So, my new mission: Go look for the pictures, do not wait for them to come.

And so, this past weekend I fought my desire for a relaxing couple of days of music and reading while lying on the couch and took a train to Leiden. A beautiful dutch city that is somehow not as well known as it should. Now, I have to admit that I chose to go there in order to pay a visit to a friend of mine I hadn't seen for a few months. BUT still, the whole idea was to dedicate at least an afternoon to photography.

And so I did.

Actually, I had two "projects" going on at once, in two different compact flash cards (so as to not cross contaminate either of them). It was a bit of a nightmare to switch back and forth between them (AND change the settings in the camera EACH time!) but I think it was worth it. I still haven't transferred the pics from the "secondary" camera but will hopefully do so soon. Soon as in before the weekend.

Ok. So, about the pictures. I don't know if it was my mood or if the people in Leiden were not that interesting, but the majority of the pictures I took were of architectural or just plain abstract nature. Of course, this doesn't mean I didn't get to shoot some people... In fact, my two favorite captures of the weekend relate to old men.
It's also striking that I came back without ANY stalker shot. I remember there being beautiful women there. I wonder why I didn't think of taking their picture.

Anyway. My favorite shot of the weekend:

























One thing I love about the shot is that it's almost symmetric. As I hinted at in the last post (at least by looking at the pictures I showed), I'm getting back into symmetrical framing: -as I put it bluntly- fuck the rule of 3rds.
What I love about this shot is that I framed it perfectly centered (I did crop a bit at the edges, though) but the picture is still not centered because the actual stuff isn't! One of the doors is shorter than the other, and this gives the whole thing a bit of tension. Just enough not to be obvious but still notice it.



Click on the Read more link to see more of Leiden through my eyes.
Let's go on the subject of centering and symmetry! Actually, centering is pretty common with square crops, but anyway... Here's a picture of a cute flower:
































I didn't realize it at the moment, but it's pretty cool that I didn't go for the usual "head on" perspective and instead took the picture from one of the sides, this makes for some interesting symmetry.
AGAIN!!!! I swear I wont be using the symmetry word again for today.
Also interesting technical details I like are the soft focus and the super low contrast on the flower itself. If you saw my photography I usually turn the contrast to 11, but this weekend I was using an orange filter, which interacts with plants in a pretty fun way.

Some abstract lines:






















I quite like this one. I mean, it's not supper impressive (and my least favorite of all the pics in this post) but there's a funny story about this last one that I think deserves posting: I didn't really take this one.
I mean, I did. I framed it, focused and pressed the shutter. But I did it blindly.
I was walking near one of the seemingly thousands of bridges all over Leiden (it's a canal city, much like Amsterdam and Delft) when I saw this small boat that was about to go under it. I immediately thought about a vertical picture, just pointing down at the boat.
The problem was that the boat was rapidly approaching and I was nowhere near ready! I just ran to the edge of the bridge while at the same time calculating how far away the water was from the bridge (3 meters??) and pre-focusing the lens. I barely made it, I just stretched my arm out, tried to point the camera downwards and got to take two frames before the boat was gone.
This one turned pretty fine IMO. I even like how the water, and not the boat, is in focus.
Again, everything about that picture is just pure luck. Which goes to show that you just need to shoot a LOT of pictures to get some good ones.
Just like going out and hitting on a ton of girls. If you ask enough of them out, one is bound to say yes. Statistics is our friend :)

And to finish this eternal post, I leave you with my cliche photo of the week.

I love that the cement was so white that it makes this more than a "silhouette against the sky" kind of pic.


(If you wish, you can see the whole set in my flickr page. Clicking on any of the images will take you there. I think.)