Mondays are always difficult for me.
Returning to work after a weekend is difficult. I remember while I was at school – hated going back to school on a Monday.
After work on a Monday I take it easy. I don’t write, I avoid social media [more than usual]. I stood in the kitchen and looked out at the apartment complex which I photograph. It wasn’t a full house [all the lights on] but I still liked what I saw. Winter is fast approaching and it was a cloudy sky. Cold. After four in the afternoon temperatures plummet to single digits.
I haven’t done any shooting with my Canon camera lately. The XE-2 feels different. It romanticizes my photography. Playing around with the film simulations and the 35mm lens does help to make it the favorite when I’m doing the apartment photos.
Using a different camera was enough motivation for me. I dug around for a bit, found the nifty fifty f/1.8 and setup my tripod.
The other bonus point the XE-2 has going for it is the display at the back on the LCD. I can enable Live View on my Canon. It doesn’t feel the same. Looking through the viewfinder is a bit tricky but the things we do for photography right? When I’m working on these photos I HAVE to do some shutter drag. Thinking about this I’m not sure why the windows doesn’t have any drag on them and only the light shows the drag? PS. Figured it out – it’s the edit -_-
I like the apartments and their colored windows but the long exposure light trails in the photos are really good. I’m working on capturing more of these types of photos.
I mentioned the film simulations earlier and with the Canon I need to use the settings to create some atmosphere. Fifteen seconds exposure at f/10 gave me this moody feeling. I moved up to 20 seconds but that was too bright. The muted green in the bottom row of windows is also something which pulls my eye. That window used to have set of blue curtains which was a breath of fresh air mixed in all the yellows and oranges.
This is my favorite shot of the evening – which was also the first shot of the evening. I edited it slightly – added lens blur but the top top and bottom. There is part of the window frame that blacks out the remaining windows in the complex.
Recently I have been looking at a few different sources of inspiration on Pinterest. The general idea of these images are what I’m looking for when I capture the apartment photos. Isolation. Mysterious. Desolate.
tl;dr
I keep coming back to the idea that whatever your style of photos, you’ll find something of yourself in there. For me, the introverted side of my personality keeps jumping into my work. Whether it is the isolated figure on the street, the empty streets or these photos of an apartment building it at night.
Thanks for reading : )