Author: Jon Schick

Following an internet poll a few years back, Havana was chosen as one of the world’s New Seventh Wonder cities, and after a recent trip there I can certainly see why;  I spent ten days being totally captivated mostly by the Cubans who made this one of the most friendly and memorable places I’d ever been.  I want to go back.  Soon.

I had a nice reminder of what is really important in life too.  Compared to the West, the Cubans get by on remarkably little – the monthly salary would barely buy a decent dinner here in London – but they are incredibly proud of their country, its free education system (and I know plenty of students in the UK who’d love free university education), free healthcare with life expectancy now better than the nearby USA, and respect for older citizens who can access services to keep them active and independent well into their 80s and 90s.  Quite simply, Cubans look out for each other and they live and work together; it’s a shame we’ve lost some of that.

There’s work for everyone and the place is a constant bustle; it also seemingly never sleeps, and it was a joy to see local friends and families simply out on the streets, walking, talking and laughing.  I was slightly less impressed by the early morning roosters though – but I suppose they meant I never over-slept.

My trip was as part of a small group of (4) photographers with a local guide for five days, and we had a fabulous time.  Having a local guide over an extended period meant we got to parts of town that most tourists probably wouldn’t see.  Travelling with a few like-minded people also meant we could talk photography and bang on about gear without boring all the people we were with!   I also enjoyed a few days by myself on the weekends either side of the trip – time to get totally immersed and just go with the moment.

There’s so much material for photographers to work with too (especially given how we’re so drawn to decay), although it’s hard to avoid some of the Cuban clichés – old cars, old ladies smoking cigars, etc.  It took a little while to ‘get my eye in’ after some fallow weeks photography-wise but I’m happy with some of the images I got.  I was even happier with the great company, the excellent music in the evenings and, let’s be honest, the rum (yum).

If you’re wondering about going, I’d say that as long as you’re not a compulsive neat-freak then don’t hesitate and get there as soon as you can – but don’t go to the all-inclusive tourist resorts; stay in one of the private casa particulares  (Cuban B&B) and get to live with the locals.  Eat like them too – simple Cuban food (grilled meat or fish with rice and vegetables) was tasty and plentiful; Cuban takes on other cuisines (Italian for example) is probably what leads to complaints from the tourists….

I hope some of these photographs might be a little encouragement too.

It’s been a while since I posted anything to the blog, largely because it’s been a while since I took the camera out for anything other than a few quick snaps.  Having a computer hard disk failure just before Christmas didn’t exactly help (and, erm, that would be about a week before I was going to install the new separate backup hard disk drive that I’d already bought and was sat next to the computer ready to go….. learn my lesson!).  And then losing all of the work I’d done on a photobook in Lightroom because the file with all my work in was corrupted when my computer crashed meant that I’ve had to redo several weeks’ work from last Summer (at least I had backups of all the photographs, so things could have been worse) before being in a place where I wanted to start generating anything new.  Don’t get me started on Apple either – my computer is a relatively new iMac and having seen that it has been absolutely designed not to be repaired by anyone other than Apple (what’s wrong with a few screws for goodness’s sake?  It should not need a hot air gun to undo a computer!) I’m not sure I’m quite as impressed as I was…..

Anyway, we’re moving on…. and as I’m soon to go to Havana for a ten day photography trip I thought I really ought to try and get back in the saddle a little.  So given the temperature in London soared by several degrees to something quite mild today, I grabbed the camera and a lens (nifty fifty) and wandered down to the South Bank to try and get back into the zone.

I’m not sure what I made of the 50mm to be honest.  I think my natural inclination would be go either a bit wider (bit like me, sadly) or a bit longer, and I’ve ended up cropping a few of these images more, but I think I’m going to persevere a bit longer until I get back into the groove with it.

I do like using prime lenses though – after a while you develop a pretty good sense of exactly what the field of view is going to look like, and there’s no denying they’re tiny compared to fast aperture zoom lenses – even mounted on a full frame dSLR (Nikon df), nobody really noticed me and the whole lot was pretty compact and discrete.

I’m liking the image quality too – not much distortion, few aberrations and plenty sharp as soon as you stop things down a little.  At f1.4 the Nikkor AF-D isn’t exactly a bokeh -monster though – out of focus highlights have quite harsh rings which are emphasised in the monochrome treatment below, but I can live with it and put it down to “character”:

It was lovely to just have a couple of hours to wander around and concentrate on the moment; I could have done with longer to be honest, and suspect that if I’d wandered less than I did, I’d probably have ended up with some stronger images.

But overall, I’m pleased – it was nice to get some fresh photographs, lovely to be out and have some me-time, and also rather nice to come back and have to do remarkably little by way of post-processing bar some basic black and white conversions in SilverEfex – one thing that I’m really pleased by is that if I use the Nikon in M mode but with auto ISO it seems to get the exposure exactly as I would want it to almost every single time – better than any other camera I’ve used in that regard.

I’m hoping it won’t be as long until my next post – and I’m also hoping for some more interesting subject matter, but in the meantime I hope this post might have inspired someone to pick up their camera and a lens and just get back out there again.

Cheers,

Jon

Took my first long (2 week) summer holiday in quite a few years earlier this year and did my packing in the usual way.  Tickets, passport, documents, money etc a few days in advance (and slightly compulsively regularly checked thereafter), then lots of major angst about what camera gear to bring before doing all the boring clothing stuff at the last minute.  I don’t think I’m the only person who thinks they’ve got a plan about what to take (and possibly even buys some new stuff for the trip along the way), changes their mind a few times about what can’t be left at home, lays it all out and has a shock about quite how much they thought was “essential”, and….. in my case put it all away apart from a compact (Fuji X30), spare battery (hardly needed as Fuji finally saw sense and packed a battery with decent life with this latest version of the camera) and charger.

Didn’t regret it for a moment.

The trip (a cruise around the Baltic since you ask, which I thought was quite brave given that only a few days previously I’d adamantly said there’s no way you’d get me on one of those hideous boats full of too many people you can’t escape from) was about enjoying the moment, being with Elena and taking in the sights.  I’m rather glad I didn’t turn into one of those people who spend so much time taking photographs of everything that they forgot to simply stop and look.

I got some photographs I’m happy with – the one at the top of this article being one (farmer’s market in St Petersburg), the one below being another:

And the photo above was much easier to take with a small camera (and articulated screen) than it ever would have been with a dSLR too.

Sure the camera has its restrictions (not so much control over depth of field, things get noisy in shadow areas when you head up the ISO scale, and let’s not talk about the panorama function which I will never bother to use again because of all the stitching errors) but there are some workarounds (including some of the various “modes” such as “pro low light” which on this occasion I tried indoors in museums).  The other thing I did is something I’ve not done in years;  I used the camera in JPEG only (I wanted to give the Fuji film simulations a try).

So lesson learned; good compact cameras nowadays are good enough for many purposes unless you really are going to obsess at pixel-level or make large prints.  The Fuji is so good that I’ve rethought my gear.  All the micro Four Thirds stuff has been sold because the X30 is good enough to replace it for most social and informal occasions, and I’ve kept a foot in the dSLR camp with a camera with a much larger sensor (full frame) and a few nice prime lenses for when the need arises. A few more photographs from the summer below for people who want to try and work out where I went:

Cheers,

Jon

I could have named this post “Small Things Make A Big Difference 2” because, similar to the Fuji X30 (see previous post) I’ve discovered over the past few months that the Olympus E-M1 works so much better for me than the previous E-M5.  None of the differences between them are major by themselves, but the combination of a much better grip, easier access to some key controls without digging into menus, and replacement of tiddly squishy buttons with ones that inspire confidence in a camera that feels altogether less fragile all add up to a much better experience.  The E-M5 sometimes used to get in the way of my photography but getting rid of some quirks has made the E-M1 much more fluid to use with confidence.  Best thing is that the E-M1 is much better to use with my old Olympus lenses from the E-1, because of its vastly better focusing system.

Today we went on a whim to Battle, where there was a re-enactment of the Battle of Hastings (14 October 1066 for those who were asleep in that particular lesson) and spent a couple of hours having a lot of fun in a muddy field after a great lunch in the oldest pub in the town.  Always nice to have a glass of Harvey’s (Lewes’ finest beer) too….erm, thank goodness for image stabilisation then!

I used a relatively high ISO (640) to keep the shutter speeds high during the re-enactments but these images needed very little post-processing work on the computer – a touch of clarity and a bit of added vignetting and they were good to go.  Oh, and as they were all taken with the diminutive Lumix 35-100 f3.5-5.6 zoom (great little lens but not really long enough for today’s purposes) we also had to have an extended consultation with Dr Cropalot.  After looking at the photos I got when I got home, I’m very happy.  As for Battle, it was a lovely town well worth a day-trip, and the effort that went into the re-enactments (including all of the activities going on beyond the main arena) made for a very memorable visit.  A few more photos below:

I know they talk about Brighton being London-by-the-sea but as Herne Hill loses some of its middle class solidity and embraces a more eclectic lifestyle, it almost feels like Brighton-in-the-city!  The neighbourhood is more vibrant than ever and full of personalities.  In the background of the featured photo above is our local town cryer (yes, really….) looking on as part of the throng of, erm perhaps 20, as we celebrated the second birthday of the Herne Hill Station piano.  Every night when I get home I hear someone tickling the ivories and that, along with the smell of the takeaway thai food from the station caff (posh coffee in the morning, thai takeout on the way home) is really rather comforting.  Here’s the birthday boy/girl (no idea if/whether the piano is M or F), during a rendition of Happy Birthday as a duet with a local blind guy who’s often to be heard giving it a whirl:

Sometimes these little scenes make you feel that a little bit of the world really is alright after all….

Had a fun walk last Friday evening leading a photo-walk with some members of the E-System Group in London – a nice stroll from St Paul’s to Blackfriars and back, via the Old Bailey, Samuel Johnson’s House, Fleet Street and Farringdon.  Slightly disappointed with the photography though – the city streets were full of drunk workers spilling out of the pubs, and a close look at the architecture turned me into a mini-HRH!  Carbuncles surrounded us, Paternoster Sq offended us, and new builds around the Old Bailey confused us.  One of London’s charms is that it has buildings from so many different periods jumbled next to each other but I need to be convinced that much of the new modular stuff going up is anything other than generic mediocrity that could be anywhere (without decent planning laws).  Blimey you can tell I’m heading to a “significant” birthday….  It didn’t help that the light quickly dulled too, so our photography walk soon turned into dinner in a pub near Smithfields – so all ended alright on the night!

The image at the top of this post is of an alternative to the pianos that are stationed around London – a guitar in an upturned boat instead – very nice too, and probably less likely to attract toddlers than the beaten up Joanna in the tunnel of my local station at Herne Hill.

We also saw one of the Asian pre-wedding photo sessions on the steps of St Paul’s.  All slightly surreal with the “groom” not cracking a smile through the whole thing, and a tourist in the corner just watching incredulously:

There was one new build near the Old Bailey which caught my attention, mainly because of its repeating pattern and colours:

But my favourite image from here was probably from the window of the holding cells:

I’d like to say I had better luck in Brighton the following afternoon but I’m not sure I did really!  A couple of images below which demonstrate that at least the weather was nice:

And a final one which is probably my favourite from Brighton – leading lines, a bit of grunge, and something about balance when you’ve got three main things in the frame:

It’s looking like we have a “scorcher” to come this next weekend, so time for another go….

Cheers,

Jon

What is the point of having a big smelly furry hungry beast that requires constant attention and walking if it can’t even protect its own garden (all 25 feet of it) from the neighbourhood foxes?  I wondered why the cats were all staring out of our kitchen window when I got home this afternoon – and then saw this slightly scrawny vixen, followed by a cub who didn’t stay long enough to have his baby photo taken.  They’re attractive animals, but less so in the middle of the night when they appear to party even more than my teenage daughter.  Harry was sleeping on the sofa (he doesn’t even have the decency to look guilty any more) when I got back.

The photo at the top was taken with my old Olympus 18-180 lens (ie the one that’s not supposed to be very good if you’re into always buying the best).  Sometimes having a versatile all-in-one is better than scrabbling around trying to find the right lens for the particular occasion.  Earlier this afternoon it didn’t do too terribly with some “macro” shots either – more furry beasts but of a different scale this time:

Have a good week ahead….

Jon

I was convinced this morning when I was walking along London’s South Bank to catch a train from Waterloo that there’d either be no photography at all, or that at best the flat light and miserable weather would make it a monochrome morning.  Wrong.  I had time to take a handful of photographs en route and the only ones I liked were in colour!  Shows how well I can picture things beforehand…. A bit of grunge and dramatic contrast has lifted these shots and they turned out to be all about the colour – utterly lifeless in black and white.

This is HMS President, originally built in Scotland in 1918 and sporting spectacular “dazzle” camouflage as part of WW1 commemorations.  She was only in active service for a few years and was more recently sold for use now as a riverside bar.