Spain

I just spent two months in Spain. More specifically the city of Palma on the island of Mallorca.

Mallorca is very well known in Europe as a tourist destination, but few people go there to actually learn about the locals or take street pictures.  

I was lucky enough to stay in a very colorful neighborhood with many different ethnicities. So walking around there was a blast. The following pictures were taken all over the island with compact cameras.

Berlin

Two years ago I participated in a photography competition called "The Internet's Most Talented Photographer" hosted by DigitalRev TV in Hong Kong. It sounds more glorious than it was. But it was a lot of fun. I became one of 16 finalists from all over the world and even though the competition is long since gone, that group of 16 is still active and talking to each other on Facebook. 

Last week, I met one of them in person: Forest from Maine, USA. Forest was spending some time in Berlin and I took a day off to meet him there. He is a young event photographer, mostly doing weddings and portraits, whereas I'm more of a street photographer. Since there weren't any events to go to, we just roamed the streets of windy Berlin and found quite a few interesting subjects. Even the sun came out for a while to make things look more interesting.

Lightening Up

The future is in compact cameras. Very compact cameras. Even professional photographers, who wouldn’t dare turning up at a commercial shoot with anything less than a flagship model for fear of not being taken seriously, will downsize their equipment dramatically over the coming years.

It’s a matter of size and unobtrusiveness, but it also plays into other aspects like cost, ergonomics, weight and physical wellbeing. Talk about joints, feet and lower back. 

I walk an average of five to ten miles a day - for photography, for necessity and for the simple joy of walking.

I trash four pairs of shoes each year, two jackets, two pairs of pants and more socks than I care to count. My ideal photography outfit consists of appropriate clothing, good walking shoes, a wallet, a cell phone and one small, lightweight camera with a replacement battery. No backpack. No shoulder bag. Nada. 

The idea is to carry as little extra weight as humanly possible. Aiming for that target I have continuously shrunk my carried equipment over the past two years.

It all started with a Canon 5D Mark 2 and a backpack from hell, moving on to a Fuji X100 with a very thin backpack and now ending up with a Canon S110 point-and-shoot in my pocket. That’s a 20-pound weight loss. What a relief! I lost another 20lbs in body-weight, by the way, which is also a good thing if you like to walk a lot.

Fortunately, technology has moved on to such an extent that even small-sensor cameras now deliver excellent pictures. Does a point-and-shoot cover all the bases? No. It’s a compromised piece of equipment. But it delivers good results in about 80 percent of all cases and that’s plenty.

I don’t make money with the pictures I take while I’m walking the streets of Rome, Tokyo or Hong Kong. There is no client to tell me what to shoot and how to shoot it. It’s a free-flowing creative process and there is no pressure, other than the one I put on myself.

I tend to shoot wide and get close. At a maximum wide angle of 24mm the S110 allows me to do that. I rarely ever zoom out past 50mm and Bokeh is not usually something I look for in my street or travel images.

Low-light performance? Well, see for yourself.

In good light and when photographing in RAW format there is very little to remind me that I’m not using a 5D Mark 2 with a 16-35mm L lens. That’s a $3000 price difference we are talking about here.

And let’s face it, a 5D Mark 2 with a big lens on it is much more intimidating to the people around you than a small touristy point-and-shoot the size of a smart phone. I even bought the white model of the S110 to make it look more toy-like. Black may be harder to see, but it also looks sneakier. All I can say is: white works.

So my tip to you is this: if you are an experienced photographer and know how to use a camera well, there is no reason not to try downsizing. It will make you more flexible and less conspicuous. It will keep you healthier in the long run and it'll save you some money, for gear and for healthcare. Not a bad idea, is it?

More iPhone Fun

I've been leaving my regular cameras at home and just went out with my iPhone 4s. These are some of the best shots of the past few days.

Doing it Moriyama Style

Daido Moriyama is a Japanese photographer I just recently came across. I had heard the name several times in conversation over the past years, but never looked it up. 

Then I saw this video:

The film was made in 2000, but not much has changed in the way Moriyama works. He looks a little older now, but at 74 still walks around his favorite neighborhood of Tokyo everyday and shoots pictures with his compact camera. In the film he uses an analog camera. Later, he moved on to digital. But really, the camera is just a tool to him. And he says so in the film. 

Interestingly, I'm less inspired by Moriyama's pictures than I am by his style of working. Walking and shooting. Stopping in a bar. Smoking, drinking. Back on the street for more shooting. For hours on end. Plus, I really like his attitude about photography as a whole. Very relaxed. 

I was so inspired, in fact, that I started going out with my camera more. I would set my alarm for 5am and go out shooting for a few hours. Then I would do the same at night. Throw in my usual daily workload and guess how I felt after a few days. It's great, of course, to be walking through the city in the early morning and be there when the place wakes up, but it's not easy. It's hard work and it makes you tired. Very tired.

So I guess I'll be taking it a little easier and maybe go out every other day to find my balance. 

Taking more pictures than usual now, I found that I produce more keepers as well. And that's a good motivation.