Category: Cityscape / Landscape

Tuesday | Day Two

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I woke up tired, realizing as I turned off my alarm that I missed a FaceTime call from my daughter… a frustrating way to start the day.  The weather forecast called for:

“Thunderstorms, some severe.  Storms can bring downpours, large hail, damaging winds and a tornado”.

A tornado?  In Paris?  This could be interesting…

The rain held off until the end of the day, allowing us to explore and photograph the two islands in the Seine:  Île de la Cité  and Île Saint-Louis.  It was a day on the streets, a reminder that the heart of Paris doesn’t just beat in the churches or the towers, in the museums or the palaces.  The heart of Paris beats on its streets, in the lives of its citizens, and this is what we set out to capture on this day.

Simple scenes.  Snippets of daily life.  The heartbeat of a city.

Click here to view part SIX of this series

Monday | Day One

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We start the workshop at 11am, running through a presentation on storytelling travel photography while sitting in a shady part of Luxembourg Gardens.  I’ve been restless all morning leading up to this point, filled with excitement, because I get to spend the week doing what I love more than anything else… I get to teach.

It is overcast when we start, with a light sprinkling of rain that comes and goes.  We use the grey skies to emphasis the importance of finding interesting subjects and moments when you don’t have great light to work with.  Our explorations take us through the park, to a cafe for lunch, and then on to visit a church.  Our journey then takes us through the streets of Paris, down to and across the Seine.  

The clouds parted as we arrived at the Louvre and we were bathed in warm sunshine, providing the opportunity to focus on incorporating interesting light into our photographs.  The evening ended with a wonderful sunset / blue hour shoot at the Louvre, capping off an 11 hour day spent behind the lens.  

There are times when you fight the camera all day long, where you can’t make an interesting photograph to save your life.  Other days however, days like this one, gift you with interesting images around every corner.  These are the times I live for as a photographer and it was wonderful to share them with my students.

Here is a set of of images from the day.  I hope you enjoy them.

Cheers,

Ian

Click here to view part five of this series

A Photographic Return to San Francisco

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I start every year with a trip to San Francisco, a city that I have written about many times in the past.  It is a place I go to re-charge, to visit friends, to get inspired and, of course, to make new images.

Just before my last trip there I happened upon the following quote:

“I walk,

I look,

I see,

I stop,

I photograph.”

– Leon Levinstein

This perfectly sums up how I feel about San Francisco now.  I never make detailed plans when I am in the city, choosing instead to wander randomly for hours at a time.  I may shoot street photography for a few hours, grab a meal, then hop a bus somewhere to spend my evening making a new blue hour cityscape.  On other days I sit by the water and write for a while, then spend the afternoon focusing on making portraits.  There are also many days where I just put the camera away and live in the moment.  It is an instinctual, mindful, wonderful way to approach photography.  I walk, I look, I see, I stop, I photograph.  And, I always come home inspired to tackle the year ahead of me.

Here is an eclectic mix of new images from the city by the bay.  Everything here was taken with a Fujifilm X-T3 and the 23mm f/2 lens.  It’s all I need.

Best wishes,

Ian