Streets of Maastricht

In the woodlands nearby home Spring has still not arrived. So still no lushes greens and garlic flowers to photograph. I decided to do some photo walks in Maastricht. A city not far from our village. First time I went with the bike. It is easy to move around in the city with the bike. So, you can visit al lot of interesting locations. The second time I went with the car. That time I did not have a lot of time due to other non-photography related activities.

It was sunny during these photo walks. The light invited to focus on scenes with a lot of dynamic range between the highlights and the shadows.

For street-photograpy I mostly set my XT3 to the black and white setting “Monochrome + red filter” film simulation. For me, with this setting it is more easy to focus on the contrast in the images created by the light. I always shoot raw, so in post I can always change a colour setting.

My standard lens for the streets is the Fujifilm 35mm F2 (52mm full frame equivalent). For me this focal length gives a good balance between leaving enough distance between me and the subject I want to photograph and it gives the possibility to simplify the image by leaving out distractions you can get in the frame while using a more wide angle lens like the 23mm F2 or 16mm F2.8. I also pack the 50mm F2 in my small shoulder back. I use this lens when I cannot come close enough to the subject to fill the frame.

landscape woodland photography I like to plan in detail (like the route I want to hike and the specific locations I want to visit).

When I do street-photography the actual moment of being at the scene is the most decisive for me taking photographs. In my “street-images” I like to incorporate a person or sometimes more people showing their natural behaviour. This cannot be planned. All images I take are not staged. It is always candid. When I do find an interesting location (highlights and shadows) I will stay for a while and take some images of different persons passing by. On these photo walks I also experimented on taking images of shop windows containing reflections op people passing by.

On post processing I decided to use the “Eterna cinema” film simulation as a starting point for working on the colour version of the images. This simulation with its muted colours gives a ‘cinema look’ to the images I really like.