What matters most?

Berlin (2011) - OM2 / Zuiko 35mm f2.8 / Fuji Superia 400

Absolutely not the gears. Important, but not THAT important..

I thought it was skills. But that are limited, one knows the basics after shooting for a year or two. What you want to do with a set of skills matters more.

Uniqueness. I thought it matters if you have something unique and everyone can recognized. I read about it, and the general advise from others is to be true to our vision. Not copying. Some have found theirs quite naturally, some are still searching, and some are lost. And vision needs renewal too, or you stuck.

So I think about Curiosity. Curious for what could be captured, for how the prints look like. Curious about life, for what you want to say about it. Curious about self to express it in pictures. Some buy new camera every year to satisfy that curiosity. Some follows a 5-year project to see how life of the city has changed. If not for it, even with the camera in your bag, you don't bother to take it out...

That what I think matters most, for now.

Your thoughts?

Analox

About manual focus

In 2008, I posted this question online - "Manual focus - when is it useful?"

http://photo.net/beginner-photography-questions-forum/00Rd7o

At that time, I was using digital DSLR with all the "haft press to quickly autofocus" practice. For me, manual focusing is too slow to capture the "candid moment", which I was after back then. For that question in Photo.net, I got many replies, all make senses but still suggest that manual focus seems not to suit me well.

Only when I started using the OM (SLR) cameras - then the rangefinder, manual focus has changed my way of seeing, for better or worse. Simply that with these cameras, I have better ways of telling me whether the subject is in focus or not, rather than guessing on a small viewfinder of the Olympus E620.

There is one important thing I realize from that experience : "Manual focus strengthen the connection between me and my subject". Why? With manual focusing, you simply observe the subject with much more attention and... focus. By checking if one's eyes are in focus, you also notice how she smiles, how the hairs look or how the background changes, etc... With rangefinder, you might have to guess the distance between the subject and yourself to pre-focus the lens even before raising the camera up. Slower speed, but much higher attention! And from there, the connection is established - I think.

Last but not least, by focusing manually, you lend yourself much more towards the serendipity, which to me is the wonderful joy of photography. Who do not enjoy the surprised gift? Take this as an example. Here is my favorite shot from the trip to Vietnam in 2012. I saw the boy jumping while walking along the beach in the morning. I was not sure if I got it until I saw the scan and smiled happily.

Olympus OM2 + Zuiko 50mm f1.4 / Tri-X 400

Have you already consider to change your 35mm or 50mm prime lens to MF mode (manual focus) and use it for a week or two? Let's ;)

.last post of 2012

It's another year-end... And there are much to be thankful for. Not because of anything special, but we've learned to appreciate more of what we had and what we are blessed to do.

This year has been rather quiet for us as you can see by the number of posts in 2012. Time is always a constraint, but more importantly, we have been trying to consolidate our work and define/focus more on what are really important to us.

Anyway, this supposes to be our last post in 2012. There is no usual entry of "favorite photos in 2012" since many of our photos/film have not been developed and the projects are still on-going. However, there are some news we want to share before closing this year - 2012.

Our profiles on Light & Composition - Minh Nghia & Mai Phuong

Last but not least, we would like to let you know about our new portfolios. Please pay them a visit at your spare time and let us know what you think. Your feedback will be much appreciated. The sites will be the main channels to share our photos in different genres of photography, since Flickr with its photo-stream style seems a bit messy for that purpose.

Travel Portfolio : https://a2nh.jux.com/

Street Photography: http://a2nh.tumblr.com/ 

Wedding Photography: http://a2nh-wedding.blogspot.sg/ 

It is just lovely to have more than 16000 views of this blog by 2012. It means a lot to us... Thank you so much for stopping by!
May next year 2013 be a another year of happiness, joy and success to you and to us.

Cheers