Fauxto Journalist

Seattle’s Best

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I realize “Seattle’s Best” is a coffee brand, but that’s not what this title is referring to. I just needed a title for this post.

This was supposed to be a post describing my experience shooting with two different cameras, but I decided to leave the shop talk for later and just write a photo blog post.

Carline and I were given an opportunity to fly out to Seattle from Boston (a quick jaunt that proved not so quick coming back) to visit our daughter, some friends and to explore a city that we talked about visiting. Our trip coincided with the Lunar New Year celebration in the city, which is the main focus of this post.

We met up with our friends Matt (of Light & Matter) and Garima (Gari). As always, my main focus in any scene is capturing the human condition, or a derivative thereof, so I concentrated more on the visitors than on the staff and performers of the street celebration (all three blocks of it 🙂 ).

Ok, I can’t resist; I’m going to talk a little about my shooting (I’m weak; what can I say?).

I brought along my Fujifilm X-T1 and my Leica M-P: two cameras with different “philosophies” despite Zack Arias calling the Fuji line “the new Leica”. Being in close proximity with the people around me, forced me to be a bit bold. It was either shoot something or go home empty handed. Perhaps it was because there were tons of people with cameras there that nobody really paid attention. Perhaps it was because nobody EVER pays attention. I was able to take shots at quite a close range. I tested my theory the next day away from the festivities and I pretty much got the same result. Granted, I wasn’t in people’s faces, like some street photographers are, but I was definitely in their periphery.

When I finally got to view the images, I noticed that the ones taken with the X-T1 seemed too “clinical” while the ones from the Leica were more “gritty” or “laid back”. It could be psychosomatic, so I’ll leave it up to you to decide (art being subjective and all).

Overall, the advantages and disadvantages of each camera became grossly apparent. But in the end, it’s all about the capture, though sometimes the “journey” to that capture is what one really enjoys. Even if we had come home empty-handed, we really enjoyed Seattle and the company that we were with.