A Sunny February Afternoon

Posted on Feb 24, 2023Feb 24, 2023 Posted in Architecture, Black and White Photography, Nantes Photography, portrait, street photography, UncategorizedTagged 16-35mm, 16-35mm lens, amateur photography, Architecture, black and white, Black and White Photography, bourgois, Canon 6d Mark II, day out, distortion, editing, France, French, Ian James Myers, Ian Myers, ijm photography, ijmphotography, lens, Nantes, park, photo shoot, photo walk, photographe, photographer, Photographic exercise, photography, portrait photography, Portraits, sculpture, statue, street, street photography, Street phtoography, street portrait, streetphotographyLeave a comment

Sometimes you have brunch and just feel that all is well with the world. Well, that Sunday, all was definitely well with the world, or at least, well with my world, which isn’t a bad way to be on a delightful sunny February afternoon. Out in town with my camera, well-fed, and just wandering around, seeing what would turn up in front of my camera.

If I were to be honest, I know that if I go to such-and-such an area, I will get such-and-such a kind of photo, so we can’t about wandering around aimlessly, but there was a sort of randomness… Sort of.

Get ready for some technical information, which will hopefully explain the style of photos that I am presenting to you today. When converting my images to black and white, I edited as if I had a red filter on my camera and as if I were using black and white film. When using this red filter, anything that is blue comes out in a darker tone. It’s going to be easier to use an image instead of a thousand words…

Basically, anything that is a deep blue turns almost black and makes for a powerful image. Some people love it (I do), others don’t (ah well), and that’s all fine too! You get the picture!

A lot of the photos that follow will exhibit this effect as if they were case book studies. You need the sky to be a certain way or it just won’t work, but when it does, you get the kind of image that jumps out at you. That and the 16-35mm lens, you can’t really go wrong. Mind you, after that delicious brunch, not a lot could go wrong…

He’s still wider…

Posted on Oct 14, 2022Oct 13, 2022 Posted in Black and White Photography, France, Nantes PhotographyTagged 12mm, 12mm lens, 2022, Anneaux de Buren, autumn, black and white, Black and White Photography, day out, distortion, fish eye, fish eye lens, France, fuji, fuji XT2, Fujifilm, Fujifilm X Series, fujifilm xt2, fujixt2, hangar à bananes, Ian James Myers, Ian Myers, ijm photography, ijmphotography, ile de nantes, Landscape, le voyage à Nantes, lens, Loire, Loire Atlantique, mass, nantais, Nantes, ohc, orchestra, orchestre d'harmonie Cholet, photo walk, photographe, photography, pub, river, Street phtoography, wide-angleLeave a comment

Dear Reader, in my last article I said I would try and get some more photos for your delectation. On Saturday I was in a rehearsal room all afternoon playing for a new orchestra. The Symphonique des Bords de Loire, which basically means on the river Loire just south of Nantes.

The Orchestre d’Harmonie de Cholet have just just changed musical direction, and all of a sudden I was looking for a new direction (not the pop group), so I seized the opportunity to make a change and start playing some more “classical” music in a different setting. I of course wish them the best of luck with their new conductor.

So that’s where I was on Saturday afternoon and so wasn’t really busy capturing images with my new toy.

My wife has decided to get to some Spring cleaning. Who ever said you can’t do autumnal Spring cleaning? Vive la différence! My cleaning skills despite military training in the early nineties have been declared not up to my wife’s standards and methods so my apparent incompetance is your gain, and also allows me to be out taking photographs with my new toy, the 12mm TT Artisan fish-eye lens on the Fujifilm XT2. At least I’m doing something creative instead of getting shouted out for being bloody useless.

So, I am now in town taking photos at the Hangar à Bananes which is seriously lacking in bananas before going to Sunday night mass, and looking after my soul. You get a different kind of crowd on a Sunday night and it feels a little more exclusive. I will then proceed to the pub for a pint of Guninness to look after the Guinness family, and to continue to drink the pub dry one pint at a time. This is a life long quest so I can take my time instead of do it all in one session. I suspect that they might being re-supplied before I can dent their stock. I suppose it’s just a feeble excuse to go to see my friends and talk bollocks all night.

Here is the photographic evidence of the time spent this afternoon pursuing artistic endeavours!

He went wider

Posted on Oct 7, 2022Oct 7, 2022 Posted in Architecture, France, Nantes PhotographyTagged 12mm, 12mm lens, 2022, 50mm, architechture, Castle, chateau, chateau des ducs de bretagne, colour photography, distortion, fish eye, fish eye lens, France, French, fuji, fuji XT2, fujixt2, historical, History, Ian James Myers, Ian Myers, ijm photography, ijmphotography, lens, Loire Atlantique, miroir d'eau, Nantes, nantes Castle, photo walk, photographe, photographer, Photographic exercise, photography, town, wide angle lensLeave a comment

Dear Reader, you know how in the past I have talked about how some of us love the big massive telephoto lenses? And how others like to go wider? And how we start of with the “nifty fifty” F1.8 and learn on that? That was in the days before digital photography and a world where zoom lenses came to the fore. We had them before in the days of film photography, but my memories are of using these prime lenses, and zooms seemed to be looked down on. I wanted to go wider.

I remember my first proper photography course where I learnt the basics of film photography, going from taking the photo, developing the film, and getting a print as an end result. I remember seeing a photo of a horse taken with a massive head taken with a wide-angled lens and finding it fascinating! When I said the head was massive, the lens deformed our view of this majestic beast and its body seemed smaller than its head, which is something indeed. It was then that I learnt a photograph doesn’t have to represent a visual that is faithful to the subject. We can mess around with reality and show the world completely differently.

So, as I said, I learnt photography with a 50mm lens. These 50mm seem to be closest to how the human eye sees the world. It represents reality. In 2018 I acquired the Fujifilm X100F which has a lens equivalent to a 35mm lens. Slightly wider, but still represents the reality of this world, and is considered “the” street photography lens par excellence. It has a larger angle of view and allows me to get a little more in the frame and I felt the difference with the 50mm straight away. It was still a great lens and very versatile until I tried taking a close-up portrait. All of a sudden, I discovered some distortion in my model. I’m not saying that my model is deformed, well, no more deformed than any of us.

Suddenly watching YouTube, as many of us do apparently, I discovered the 16-35mm F4 lens from Canon for my Canon 6D Mark II. It was a little more than I had ever paid for a lens, but worth every centime of euro and so satisfying. If you care to have a look in the archives of this blog on my Instagram feed, you will discover many photos taken with this lens. My desire to go wider was now a reality. Distortion of reality was now in my hands. I could create interesting images. I discovered the way a very wide-angled lens can transform the world around us. Leading lines exist all over the place, and the wide-angled lens exaggerates each line, leading or not!

But, and this is a big but. You fellas can’t deny… It is possible to go wider. I know. Exciting isn’t it! My mind is now blown! There is a lens, a very special lens, called a fish-eye lens. This type of lens can offer you even more distortion and make the world seem even weirder than it already is! Canon does one. It’s a 15-8mm zoom lens. There are two types of fish-eye lenses. One will give a rectangular view, however distorted, and one will give a round image with a black frame. It’s a wonderful piece of engineering and for over €1000 it can be yours. But for €1000 it can’t be mine simply because I can’t justify spending that much money on camera kit and might even be cause for divorce. Since it is cheaper to keep her, I would have to look elsewhere instead of buying a super duper automatic lens from Canon. So like any self-respecting poor photographer I went onto Amazon and found a manual lens for my Fujifilm XT2 (like the famous X100F except I can change lenses) for 169€ which is slightly cheaper and a slightly more reasonable purchase, and my dear wife didn’t bat an eyelid! Not batting and eyelid is a very desirable reaction!!!

I will go out this afternoon to test this new toy and get back to you with some pictures!