Piraeus Night Ride - a shooting and editing experience with the Leica Q2 and Nik Color Efex

It took me 8 months to edit the pictures.

In May 2020 I took a night ride through Piraeus, Athen’s harbor city with my Greek friend Alex. On our way back from a trip on the island of Salamina he suggested us to drive through the dark city of Piraeus. He wanted to show me the city and I took out my Leica Q2 camera and started shooting from the passenger seat.

I set the camera to auto ISO, the aperture to f1.7 and the exposure time to 1/50 seconds. And I started shooting into the night lit streets and the traffic that we encountered.

It became a fascinating experience. We were driving through dark suburban streets where we found islands of light that appeared in front of us and disappeared again within one or two seconds. I shot picture after picture, aware that with the relative slow exposure time of 1/50 seconds I would have some blur effect (in order to “freeze” a scene that you shoot from a driving car you need to use at least 1/250 second, better 1/500 or even shorter).

I uploaded the RAW pictures in the following week to my external hard drive, created the usual backup files on a second external hard drive and then I didn’t touch them for a few weeks.

When revisiting the pictures for the first time I found them a little boring and did not know what exactly to do with them. The motion blur was kind of interesting but it did not give the pictures shape and and any fascinating feeling. I processed some of the pictures, posted some on Flickr but neither me nor my followers were particularly interested in the results.

Not bad - but not really interesting either……

Kind of moody - but something is missing…..

And then I forgot about them. I had many other interesting subjects to shoot and I did my editing of these pictures. The Piraeus ones were on the hard drive and I did not touch them.

8 months later I accidentally came across he pictures again. And immediately I knew what to do. I had just worked with the Nik editing apps recently. So I took the RAW pictures, transferred them to Nik Color Efex where I applied some presets that suited the dark, moody atmosphere of the night and the environment.

Thew same picture with a new edit

In a second step I exported the pictures to Photoshop where I used the blur tools to enhance the motion blur effect that the pictures already had.

Color cast and blur effect

And in a last step I added some texture and clarity in lightroom and did some local enhancements of light and colors. The editing of each single picture took me between 15 and 30 minutes. That includes the time I sometimes took between step 2 and 3 in order to re-evaluate my results and to start doing my local adjustments in Lightroom.

And all of a sudden the pictures had a feel that reflected the mysterious atmosphere that we had experienced during the ride through the city of Piraeus.

We often read the recommendation to let the pictures “mature” after the shooting and to let them “rest” for a while. I often don’t follow that recommendation. But in this case leaving the pictures alone and coming back with fresh and unbiased eyes gave me the opportunity to create a completely new and different approach. Revisiting the older ones can make a lot of sense. I love the results……

Happy New Year! - Street Portraits on New Year's Eve in Wellington, New Zealand

I had nothing better to do. On New Year’s Eve I decided that I wanted to visit the city centre of Wellington to catch some street portraits of the party goers in the hours before midnight. So I put my Nikon D850 in my bag, put the Nikkor 85mm f1.8 lens on that I use for portrait shooting and started into the night.

My starting point was not overly good. I was not in the mood for party nor to meet people and to converse. But I did want to shoot. Initially I could not even be bothered to take my camera out of my bag. But then I sat down next to an amazing blues guitar player in the pedestrian zone of Cuba Street. This blues man invited me to shoot him while playing. So I sat down opposite to him and started shooting. And next to me on that bench was sitting a little guy with tattoos all over the face, the smell of cheap wine coming from his mouth. He started talking to me in a mix of English and German language. And he made me aware of the “dangerous two guys over there that are for sure American spies. That broke the ice. :-)

I was sitting there, taking picture of the musician, of people sitting around him on benches. And then I took off, walking back into the party zone at Coutney Place. And all of a sudden I was “in the flow”. I sought eye contact with the people coming towards me, started asking them for their picture. The atmosphere was easy going, people where already a little tipsy and in relaxed and beautiful mood.

It really flowed. I walked down the place on both sides into all directions. And then I met those girls. They had a little too much alcohol, no doubt. And they showed me the Haka. Right into my camera. Full on. I was blown away and exacted two pictures.

Do you know the Haka…?

And it went on and on. Surprising and sometimes a little annoying was that nearly everybody that I shot took on a pose immediately. They are all Instagram trained!! Everybody does it. They put their heads together, hands up, fingers spread and smiiiile. It is as if everybody had the same trainer that told them how to take on the “right pose”. It is incredible.

I stayed in the flow for 2 and a half hours. Until I was really empty. Until I had really all the pictures I wanted. Until I was really happy.

The Sweeties

The Bouncer

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

RX1

I'd like to write a little about my Sony RX1 camera. This website is certainly not intended to be a gear review site. There are thousands of others doing this and I am not the right person to follow them suit. But I'd like to tell my story with this camera and why I am using it now again. 

The RX1 was the first camera that I bought after I had re-discovered photography some two years ago. Steve Huff (http://www.stevehuffphoto.com) had written enthusiastic reviews on this camera and I found the concept appealing. Small, light, full frame, versatile and with a real good Zeiss f2.0 lens. So I bought it. And tried it. And kind of failed. 

A 35mm lens is very universal. And I wanted to use it for multiple purposes. I was particularly keen on trying it as a street photography camera. And honestly - as such it sucks. AF is much too slow, screen reflections are awful in bright sunlight, you can't turn off magnification on the screen when you focus manually. It is a disaster. And Sony are bold enough not to update the firmware to allow us simple and normal manual focussing. I was flabbergasted. This thing was really expensive and it fails in such details. 

For landscape 35mm often is not wide enough. So I found the camera not very fit for that purpose either. And portraits with a 35mm lens - hm, you can do that, but there are certainly better ways of pointing out the beauty of your models' facial lines. 

After all I didn't know what to do with this camera after some months and so it ended up in a drawer very much to my annoyance. 

Until - well until I had this camera with me when I went out for a night photoshoot some few weeks ago. Winter is coming in New Zealand and the days are much shorter now. So it's night photography season again. 

And all of a sudden I realised what a beautiful night shot camera this is. You can bump up ISO to 6400 or even 12500 and shoot it hand-held.  It creates an interesting grain that you can easily work with in processing. Colour rendering is nice and interesting in the dark. And the lens gives amazing details that you can use very nicely when you process the shots. 

So after all it turned out that Steve was right when he praised the night shooting qualities of this camera in his reviews. (http://www.stevehuffphoto.com/2012/10/09/night-time-street-shooting-with-the-sony-rx1-amazing-high-iso-samples/) It took me only two years to find that out.... :-)  You can certainly call it luxury to have a "night-shot only camera" available. And I would certainly not buy this expensive thing for that purpose only. But as I am having it anyway I will use it and enjoy taking pictures in the dark. 

Please take a look at my recent colour night shots on Flickr (https://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisrsouthland/) and in the "urban" section of this site. They are all taken with the RX1.