Seattle street photography

I thought I’d try something different. When I’m out doing a photo-walk or street photography, I usually prefer a prime lens; the 35mm (on a crop sensor) tends to be my favorite. I try to keep it very simple when I’m out walking around and exploring.

This past weekend, I decided to use the Sony emount 55-210mm telephoto lens on my walk through Seattle’s Chinatown. I thought at least it’d be a good option for covering the International Lion Dance Team, especially for when they’re parading down to their main destination. The Sony emount 55-210 lens

is consider a mediocre or basic lens by many users. It’s slow, but at $2000 less than the awesome Canon L 70-200mm USM II lens, I really like it’s affordability. Plus it’s super light; in fact it’s so light and compact that I can actually put it in my coat pocket. There’s no way that I could ever do that with the Canon 70-200mm, nor would I want to lug it around a lens that heavy.

The bottom line is that photography is so much about trade-offs and compromises. While the image quality of the Sony mount 55-210mm is not going to compete with premiere lenses, the Sony 55-210mm is good to have when you need that extra reach. On a clear day when there’s plenty of light, this lens actually does fairly well. I’ve used this lens indoors and what I’d say is “phoget about it” LOL.

I’ve also been using my Sony a6000 a lot lately. Again, the awesome but powerful little camera is so compact that I can carry it in my coat pocket and always have it with me. It produces high quality images, and my DSLR has been sitting around collecting dust lately. By the way, this is by no means a lens or camera review; if anything, it’s probably more of a rant at this point LOL. So on this note I’ll go ahead and stop here. Hope you enjoy the photos below. Seattle is a great place for photography, and its International District and Chinatown are no exception.

Umm… where do I begin? Well, I did a lot of walking today. The rain subsided so I decided to take advantage of the dry weather and hit the 206 pavement.

I hopped on the light rail to Chinatown bright and early this morning. From there I walked to Pioneer and grabbed a quick Americano at a non-Starsucks coffee shop. I then walked north on 1st Ave through Pioneer Square to Pike Place Market. After snapping a few photos there, including a photo of the Back to the Future DeLorean (was awesome to see this care – quite the crowd drawer as you’d expect), I strolled to Belltown, then to Westlake, and and ultimately I took 5th Ave southbound to end up at Chinatown again. I took several hours to complete this walk and I stopped by A Piece of Cake for a pholicious bowl of soup afterwards. I might blog about this in a separate entry later on.

But where I should really start with this blog is by stating that I’m sure I broke all shorts of photography rules with the photos here. Without going into details, I used an ultra-wide angle lens to shoot these photos, something all the experts seem to suggest to avoid as wide angle lens will distort people and faces, especially if they’re close the edges of the frame.

I started off with a 35mm lens, which is my preferred focal length for street photography, but I quickly got bored of it (simply because I use it all the time and wanted to try something different) so I put it away and took out my 12mm wide lens (crop sensor camera). I told myself I’d shoot mostly landscape and architecture but found myself still snapping photos of people; I think this says a lot about what I like to shoot most – people! At any rate, I just wanted to have fun and didn’t want to worry about rules so much. I think sometimes people forget to have fun and follow instructions too much. Just chill and snap away, unless you’re snapping for paying clients that is LOL.

Photo-walks are fun and street photography (which I clearly understand that these are not street photography photos) is quickly becoming one of my favorite forms of photography. I like that I can just start taking photos right when I leave my front door and not have to bring all sorts of equipment with me. Also, I don’t have to bring my big DSLR; in fact, it’s probably best to bring a smaller camera as to be discreet and not have to carry all that weight. Oh yeah, I also decided to post-process all the photos in black and while; there’s a first time for everything. I do like black and white a lot though, for various reasons. Another oh yeah, there’s many cliche photos here; for instance you’ll see the monorail, the parrot guy at Pike Place Market (LOL) and countless other typical landmarks and things that are way tooooo Seattle, but hey… what can I say. 🙂 More about ‘cliche’ in a future blog.

Ok, enough ranting for now. I hope you enjoy the countless photos of Seattle that I’ve included in this blog. See you on the streets of Seattle soon!

Cheers!