Spending the long Halloween weekend in our second home town Genoa down in Italy, The Significant Other and I celebrated the Halloween evening in style, participating in a Halloween Ghost Tour through the medieval town center. Tagging along was my Leica SL2-S and the TTArtisan 50mm .95 prime “Nifty Fifty” M-Mount lens.
“All Hallow’s Eve” is the eve before the religious feast All Saints (aka All Hallow’s Day), remembering the dead, saints and martyrs of christianity. Many of the traditions of Halloween are believed to originate in ancient Celtic harvest festivals and pagan traditions. It was mainly Irish immigrants to the USA who brought along the many more secular traditions like trick-or-treating, Halloween costume parties, carving pumpkins into jack-o’-lanterns and lighting bonfires. The kids for sure haven fun with this, and so does the street photographer. And not all is lost, as sometimes the good magician seems to try to kill the monster.
I wish all of you a very creepy Halloween (stay safe noneless)
“Ground Control to Major Tom” – I’m sure, you know the lyrics of David Bowie’s legendary song “Space Oddity”. I would question whether Major Tom would be available on the other side of the line. Not only, because yesterday NASA had to cancel for the third time the launch of the new Artemis moon rocket due to technical problems (I would be curious if they dubbed one of the travelling passenger dummies “Major Tom” – if anyone knows please comment below). But also because this astronaut, depicted on a mural in a restaurant in Genoa we (fittingly) visited last night, sure looks to be offline.
Let’s hope NASA fixes whatever probs they have with the Artemis rocket soon – and then goes on the radio:
“Ground Control to Major Tom Commencing countdown, engines on Check ignition and may God’s love be with you”
iPhone 12 Pro Max snapshot, converted to monochrome in Lightroom Classic. Oh, and the food in this place was awesome!
I still owe you the images from the second night of “Viggiona by Night”. Different bands, different street food. I wanted to shoot with a different lens, and put my night vision lens, the TTArtisan 50mm .95 prime “Nifty Fifty” to a real test. I attached the M-Mount lens via adapter to the L-Mount Leica SL2-S. I was really curious how the manual focus 0.95 China built lens would perform vs the Leica Vario Elmarit zoom I used the previous night in the same conditions. See the results below…
Just a snapshot from last night when I shot with my Leica SL2-S and the TTArtisan 50mm 0.95 prime lens. A photograph that works. The guy was cooking pasta at a street kitchen, and it was nearly midnight. He was a master (we tasted his delicious Bolognese when it was ready), a true Pasta King.
The Exif Data for this image read 1/1250 sec @ f/2 and ISO 3200. The file was so clean of noise that I introduced some noise in post production, when converting the RAW to monochrome. It was really pretty dark in the alley, but the TTArtisan 0.95 made it all come to live. Manual focusing with the marvellous electronic viewfinder of the Leica was a breeze.
This weekend, The Significant Other and I headed to Italy’s Lago Maggiore to visit friends who are spending their summer vacation in Viggiona, a little village in the hills above the lake. This weekend, the normal pretty sleepy Viggiona is hosting its annual “Viggiona by Night” festival, where bands are playing, all different kinds of street food and drinks are offered and the little alleys are full of people having a great time. For me a great opportunity to once more enjoy the low light capabilities of the Leica SL2-S.
I momentarily debated whether to post this image I took today in Cannobio on Italy’s Lago Maggiore. But Street Photography may be controversial, as is the life it depicts. And it may be funny, as is the life it depicts. It invites the photographer to roam the streets and watch life as it happens, to find an interesting scene, a story happening on the stage that is our world. Were all the humans are merely players.
Another weekend – another photo exhibition (have you read my post from the SteveMcCurry exhibition?). This time we were a bit more south. The Significant Other and I spent the weekend in (our former hometown) Genoa on the Ligurian coast to visit a dear friend. And, as things go, there was another exhibition in town – “L’Italia di Magnum”. Another opportunity to see great photography and do some street shooting inside the exhibition.
Although there are quite a few more street photography from our evening in Bologna, I’m closing this series out with an image aptly titled “Ciao Bella”. Taken with the Olympus OM-D E-M1X and the mZuiko 12-100 F/4, specs are 1/160 sec @ f/4 and ISO 3200 at 86mm focal length. RAW conversion in Lightroom Classic.
The next posts will be covering our trip to Greece, where we are spending our summer vacation on the Peloponnese.
“Sharpness is a bourgeois concept” is one of my favorite quotes from the godfather of street photography, Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004). Not that I want to use it as a fig leaf to cover up the fact that I wasn’t able to capture a tack sharp image of this couple being in a rush in a dark alley in Bologna’s historic old town on a late Thursday evening. Image specs are 1/15 sec @ f/5 and ISO 3200 with a 80mm focal length.
While thoroughly enjoying our days in Greece (and being busy filling my SD cards) here is some more from the streets of Bologna. This series is all monochrome (RAW conversion in Lightroom Classic). I loved the harsh contrasts the bright afternoon summer light threw onto the streets in the old town.
Back on the streets. Not only are The Significant Other and I on our way to Greece for the first proper vacation in almost two years. While spending an evening in Bologna in Italy on our way to catch the ferry in Ancona, this also was my return to street photography since the whole Covid thing started. And you know what? Not surprisingly I found out how much I had missed roaming the streets with a camera in hand and capture scenes of life as it happened around me…
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