Category: Kansas

lunch and evening in kansas (day 4)

whbeebe

Found a lovely little restaurant in the old section of Leavenworth at the corner of South Seventh and Cherokee called Luigi’s. I had a wonderful stromboli, complete with salad, bread and olive oil to dip the bread in. All for less than $10. Service was great. And they serve real Coke (I had diet Coke, and it tasted better than anything I could have gotten at a fast food restaurant).

Photo was deliberately composed for flair. I don’t care anymore if a lens flairs or not, and frankly, the more it flairs the better. Lenses are too sharp and too contrasty (yes, I just wrote that), and anything I can do to bring back some subtlety I will do. That’s what everyone likes about the so-called “film” look. It’s taken a few years, but I no longer worship at the alter of digital perfection and ultra sharpness. It’s added too much to the cost of photographic equipment and it’s stripped the humanity out of our photography.

The rest of these were post-post processed using Analog Efex Pro, this time with my own customer filter. Yes, it’s an affectation. No, I don’t care what you think. It’s a different direction (if back to the past) and I find it enjoyable.

If anybody’s keeping track, I used my second lens, the Olympus 45mm f/1.8, on one of the photos. All the others were taken using the Panasonic 25mm f/1.4. That’s all I brought with me this time, one body and two prime lenses.

an evening in kansas (day 2)

whbeebe

It was very late and very cold. Most of the snow has completely cleared off the roads around Leavenworth. There’s still plenty piled up where it’d been pushed aside this past weekend. I needed some camera therapy.

So I went out at the tail end of the “golden hour” with my Olympus E-M5 and my Samsung Galaxy S4 with VSCO Cam and into the old part of Leavenworth near the Missouri River.

After a little less than 45 minutes of photography (it’d gotten quite dark and I was slipping on icy spots) I headed to a local eatery to at least look at my Samsung images. I manged to weed out all but five, and ran those through VSCO Cam. When I got back to my hotel room I discovered that three of the five images were rotated right 90 degrees, and when I moved them off the camera to my notebook, they looked like crap, far worse than last night’s collection. They look great on the cell phone’s screen. I think I’ve just about had it with smartphone photography using Android and Samsung. I’ve made the comment before about moving to the Apple iPhone because of the iPhone’s superior camera. I believe I’m truly ready. I don’t know if I’ll load VSCO Cam on an iPhone. It might be great for the iPhone, but it’s not so great on Android and the Samsung Galaxy S4.

These images were made with my trusty Olympus E-M5 and the Panasonic Leica 25mm f/1.4. They were then post processed in Nik ‘s Analog Efex Pro Vintage Camera 2 (with some minor tweaks). I got the feel out of the E-M5 and Nik that I couldn’t out of the Samsung and VSCO Cam. For me the lesson’s pretty clear: I’d rather let the moment pass if all I have is my Samsung. From now on I’ll always have the E-M5 and one prime with a charged battery and plenty of space on an SDHC card.