Go and find your color, your emotion

It’s 10 pm in the evening and I really want to write you this post. I’m layin in my bed typing, the lazy jazz is playing on my earphones, lights are tuned down to a low yellow, a hot tea is sending up its vapor next to me on the bedside table. Herbal tea, camomile. Get the picture? If only I can get my mind at easy and over the busy and long day, and past its tired state. It is an issue that many working hobby photographers will recognise: finding time for your passion. Tonight I want to write a short post about my Saturday night photo walk.

Less gear

Last Saturday evening, about the same time as now, I decided to venture out into the rain and the dark evening to make some pictures. I had to pick up my daughter from the train station around 10.30 pm. I decided to go early and walk around the city. It was a sudden idea. I took a small body and lens (Fuji X-E3, 23mm f/2), an extra battery, my new earphones and a good rain coat. For a walk like this I really like the compact and light X-E3 body. I’m grabbing it more and more, and my X-T3 is getting less notice as a result. The 23mm lens acts as a 35mm equivalent on this APSC body, which I really like for street style. I am loving the feel, weight and results with this combo (or with the 35mm f2)! I can go on a month long trip with just this and be happy. It falls in the category of “Less is More” for me, while it is also a beautiful piece of technology. Mine is fully black (low key), with a thumb rest and a soft shutter button, providing a perfect grip. It is not water resistant (the lens is) and it was raining. Still, I carried it outside and dried it occasionally. It withstood the test!

Jpegs

Fuji is known for its great colors in jpegs, and I Find myself shooting more jpeg over the last year. I feel that I can rely on it and my settings-in-camera for everything but landscape and astro, where I want the flexibility, dynamic range and color depth of raw to use in post processing. So here I also shot only jpeg. I do tweak the picture settings in the camera in addition to the fuji film simulation selection. This way I have some five custom pre-sets build around a film simulation, that I can quickly select like a film type. For this occasion I decided before that I wanted colors that were rich and warm, so I picked what I call my “Old Grit” setting that has the following:

Velvia film simulation
Cloudy white balance with Blue correction (-1)
High contrast shadows (+2)
Low color saturation adjustment (-2)
Sharpening (+1)
Low noise reduction (-2)

I fixed the shutter time around 1/80s, the aperture around f/2.8, and let the ISO go as high up as it wants. Exposure dial was often set to -1 to -1.3 Ev. These settings gave me deep backs and rich warm colors from the street scenes.

Post

I didn’t do much in post processing. After my walk I went to the Starbucks in the train station, marked the keepers on the camera, and sipped from my tea when the camera automatically downloaded the jpegs to my phone. In the phone I uploaded them in Lightroom and did a first edit and share on Instagram. Later at home the selection was automatically synced to Lightroom on my iPad and there I did some light adjustments:

Increased the exposure a tad, where the highlights could handle it
Added.a very minor film curve that controls highlights and shadows
Added some Clarity (a rarity for me, but I think these photos benefited from it)
Minor crop here and there
Boosted red saturation and luminosity a tad

I hope you like the results! This set-up and style is growing on me and I think this will stay and become one out of three in total for me. See the jazz in the canal post for the B&W one, and I will share another post soon about my Landscape color style. Bye for now!