With an extra day this weekend, and the cold weather nearly all behind us now, I just couldn’t ignore the backyard any longer. It was time to get off my rear end and get busy outside. The lawn got mowed, the edges got trimmed, and the last of winter’s dead debris got plucked and tossed in the bin. In its place, soil was turned under and flower pots were positioned in their rightful places along the boundaries of our home. Spring had arrived.
I also wanted to take a few pics before bedtime, but I really didn’t want to go anywhere. At the end of the day, I noticed the evening light peeking through the back gate, veering around the corner to cast its shadows in the corners of our yard. I grabbed my camera and tried to see what I could find, just from the confines of my patio chair. The recently acquired 100-400 f/4.5-4.5 was still attached to the X-H2S, so it was a perfect opportunity to practice with some close ups of objects around me. I shot for about 20 minutes before the rays completely disappeared.
I don’t know about you, but I find that black and white editing seem to bring out the best in long shadows. The ordinary and the mundane seem to spring to life when the right combination of shapes join together with a broad array of tones. I’m a sucker for monochrome photography, and I have to resist doing too much of it when I’m editing for people. The Fuji X camera series are known for their Acros film simulations. Those images can look fantastic straight out of the camera, before they ever hit a desktop computer. And that’s the beauty of the brand. Don’t like to edit? Pick a film simulation and shoot away. A lot of film photographers choose Fuji for their digital work for this very reason.
Still, I prefer to shoot in RAW format and edit with the Acros sim from within Capture One. I usually find that I need to stretch the distance between the darkest and brightest tones just a bit, and position the midtones a little one way or another to get what I’m after. I get the best of both worlds: Authentic Fuji tones and colors with the flexibility of editing a RAW file. These are small adjustments, but I think they make a big difference in the final presentation of the monochrome image. There’s really not a lot more to the process. Sometimes over editing and thinking too much can ruin an otherwise fine photograph.
I’m really starting to dig on this 100-400mm lens. When I first started using it, I was using words like ‘behemoth’ and ‘beast’ to describe the experience of heaving it around. But a few months of use has started to ease its way into my muscle memory, and the lens doesn’t seem quite so unwieldy now. I’m starting to get the zoom ring under my fingers, and balancing it in my hands is getting to be second nature. I have a future article in mind where I go more in depth with this lens.
The ability for us to learn new tasks with speed and precision goes back to our earliest human ancestors. They had to tie a sharp rock to a stick, then throw it at a large animal with sufficient lethal force just so they could eat that day. For them, it was a matter of survival. I have to imagine that it was a priority for them to practice this skill often, learn from their mistakes, and hone in on the craft of hunting. We benefit from this trait today. Practicing a task with an object helps our neurons make connections with muscle tissue so that actions start to become automatic. When it comes time to perform that task, the object almost seems like an extension of our body. This happens in many fields of expertise. Professional truck drivers can back a trailer into a tight space with little effort. “No problem” is a favorite saying of theirs. Musicians don’t have to think about their fingerings to match the notes on a page. There’s usually no time for that. And we photographers need to know our gear well enough to imagine the shot we want and move our settings into position quickly and efficiently. We miss the shot otherwise.
I’m getting this new lens under my fingers, but this is also happening with the X-H2S. The buttons and dials are just different enough from my previous camera that I’m on the same learning curve. Eventually, it all comes together to create the photograph that exists in our head and make it a reality. I’m starting to get there.
“It’s all just practice” is so true. We’re all just practicing for whatever the next day brings.