Since my return from Tokyo a week or so ago I have been very concious of a couple of things. The first is the weather! It has been freezing in Melbourne – well at least freezing compared to Tokyo. And as a result, it is very tempting to become house bound during cold weather and dull lighting. The second is the need to stay creative. It would be easy to fall into a bit of a slump straight after a holiday and not do anything creative at all.

So in a bid to not become house bound and to keep the creative juices flowing I planned in advance that today, I would get out and about for a couple of hours to do some street photography. The day turned out to be perfect. Bright clear winter skys with lots of sunshine. I chose to head out as soon as I had dropped my boy off at school. I took a tram into the city to find that I had missed the peak hour of pedestrian traffic but that there were enough people around to make it work.

Much has I had found during my time in Tokyo, I chose to only take and shoot with my Fujifilm X70. If you have followed my blogs for some time you will know that I love this little camera and the images it creates. And in a street setting it is small and black and discreet. As for my shooting settings, I general go with an Aperture of F8 – that way pretty much everything from around 70cm to infinity is in focus. I will go with a Shutter Speed of between 1/250 up to 1/1000 depending on the amount of light in the scene. Finally, ISO will be anywhere from 400 – 1600 again depending on the amount of light present.

At this time of the day it is full bright however in the canyons creating by the buildings of the Melbourne, the light can drop quite a bit. So with this in mind I will shoot with an awareness of the lighting conditions and change my camera settings manually to compensate.

I didn’t end up staying out too long. I am still recovering from very sore feet from all the walking I did whilst away. But enough to get around the city to some of my favorite street shooting spots. And enough to feel like I had been out of the house for a good period of time to feel refreshed. And of course enough to capture some shtos. Happy shooting.