Restarting Photography

I now have had my gear for some while and I have found some time practicing my skills and trying to get better. One technique I employ that has helped me when I started out, is to go for a walk in a limited area and focus on one skill only. What I intend to do now, is to write several summaries and reflect on some topics

• One reflection on each walk and where the topic helped make a picture a little better
• Some summary reflection on several walks, where the topic was employed but didn’t work out
• Some summary reflection on other perspectives regarding the photos and where what worked. Could include things like monochrome, high key, low key, depth of field and others

This second installment is about employing the Tilt lens for a composition that uses a lot of blur to highlight the subject and where it worked out for me and why. The equipment used in all photos during this walk is Nikon Z6 and the TT Artisan f/1.4 Tilt 50 lens.

I really like this lens and the opportunities it creates, but I am still struggling to make i work for me. I skipped a lot of pictures that were just to blurry with to limited area of focus. You will see some of that even in the ones I select for this piece.

As you can see, there was an interesting, cloudy sky this day. I used the tilt to blur the city and keep the clouds in focus. I tried to align the skyline along the golden ratio as well. I feel that this image is better given the blurry skyline. If the buildings and city hall tower had been in focus, the clouds would be less prominent. To me the image has a slightly unsettling effect since this is the opposite as to how our eyes usually work. I want to focus on the skyline, but the image makes that impossible. I wonder how this image would work if printed in a larger print. Maybe I’ll do that sometime.

This image is much more pleasing to my eyes. The blurring effect of the tilt is on the houses in the background and the sky, keeping the life in focus. A good contrast between the people relaxing on the bench and a busy dad on a bike. The orange hoodie drawing immediate attention to him. A nice picture of city life with selected few people in focus, while you can see the many people in the background fading from the scene.

This image of a school class graduating and celebrating was a lucky shot. I saw them coming a long way, so I could adjust the manual lens in time. I tried to have the youngsters in focus, blurring both the areas above and below. Not necessarily my best shot, but an interesting perspective with the party in focus.

In the Old Town of Stockholm you can find this quite famous and narrow walkway. I tried to adjust the lens, so that the whole ally and its background are in focus, but everything else if burred. Then this group turned up to make some pictures of their own, giving me another subject within the frame of the alley. I am not sure, if this image is better due to the tilt, or if it would have been better with focus on everything. However, I think it is an interesting perspective and exercise.

These tow images were shot in a walkway towards a construction area. For the left one, I wanted to try to have the people as subject and in focus, blurring the dominant concrete structure of the ceiling. In my opinion this gives a little bit of mystery to the scene.

For the one to the right, I tilted the lens upwards instead, to get the focus on the structure of the ceiling, highlighting it and utilizing the line of the light ribbon to guide the eye. In this picture the people on the walkway are very blurry and a backdrop to the lasting concrete.

Both images from the same location tell two different stories. I like them both. It is interesting to me to display them side by side here, but if I would have them on a wall, I would want to have them in different places to emphasize the difference of their story.

I end with this picture from the Old Town, where a caf’é places their peels on the walkway. I waited until some pedestrian had an interesting reaction. The tilt gave me the opportunity to have the person reacting to the waste in selective focus, letting the rest of what is happening on the street fade into the background. I think the story in this image gets clearer with the blurring, giving the viewer no chance to be distracted by other things happening further down the street.

Learnings I will try to take with me from this outing are

• The selective blurring of the tilt lens can both add and divert from to the clarity of a scene or story. It should be used in moderation and needs a lot of time to get right
• Take a lot of time. Using a tilt lens requires more time and preparation for a good shot then a prime or zoom
• The lens gives the opportunity to tell different stories with the same location. Use different settings to take several pictures and select the one that tells the story in the best way