Photographic déjà vu

Already seen, already photographed. I sometimes hear the argument that everything has been photographed. Why would you then take a picture of the same scene, building, flower, bug - or even person - which has already been photographed a million times before? To see how it looks when you click the shutter yourself I guess.

Sometimes you know that not only has a similar photograph been taken before by many others, but you have taken it yourself at least once. This is often the case with scenes close to home or your favourite destination, even more so with pets and portraits of family members. Sometimes it's however something mundane far away from home, like this scene in Rethymnon, Crete, which I photographed twice. I have to admit the second image was simply a snap that I quickly took, when witnessing a moment of photographic déjà vu.

Rethymnon, Crete, 2008 - Canon EOS-30D, 1/500, f/7.1, ISO 100

Rethymnon, Crete, 2010 - Leica M8, 1/250, ISO 160

The lens on the Canon 30D was the Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM. On M8, I believe it was the Voigtländer 35/1.4 Nokton SC. Note the difference in quality of light. Neither is excellent, but the difference is huge. The photo from 2008 was taken in late morning light, the photo from 2010 in the middle of the day beneath the hot Mediterranean sun.

Cats through lenses

In my latest post, there are five cat photos from Amorgos and one from Crete where I could not previously identify the lens used. I went back to them, studied them, and now have some conclusions. The photograph of a cat lying on a concrete wall was taken with the Leica Summicron-M 50/2. The same lens was used for the cat fight photo (on Superia 200) and for the cat sitting on ground. The photographs of the cat with the man fishing and the cat on the roof of a car were made using the Voigtländer 35/1.4 Nokton SC. I believe this is the case also for the photo of the cat walking behind a fence, but I may be mistaken there.

Anyway, here is one final cat photograph for this year (with the Leica 50/2):

Amorgos, 2010 - 1/4, f/2, Kodak BW400CN

More cats from the islands

Nothing more than a bunch of random cat photos from the Greek islands.

Oia, Santorini, 2007 - Canon EOS-30D, 1/320, f/5.6, ISO 400

Amorgos, 2010 - Leica M8, 1/250, ISO 160

Amorgos, 2010 - Leica M8, 1/500, ISO 160

Amorgos, 2010 - Leica M8, 1/250, ISO 160

Amorgos, 2010 - Fujifilm Superia 200

Amorgos, 2010 - Leica M8, 1/360, ISO 160

And finally a more urban cat:

Iraklion, Crete, 2010 - Leica M8, 1/90, ISO 160

The photograph with the Canon was made with the Canon EF 70-200/4L lens. The rest? Your guess is almost as good as mine. I think I see at least the Voigtländer 35/1.4 Nokton SC there. The film shot is a pretty heavy crop.

Super wide angles

Wide-angle lenses can be a lot of fun. Super wides are super fun. I liked the Voigtländer 15/4.5 Super Wide Heliar the moment I tried it, and it has since become one of my favourite lenses. It's tiny, sharp, and gives that extremely wide view on film — or a full-frame digital Leica. Using a wide-angle lens is however often quite challenging. They are pretty much the worst enemies of simplification, which is an important tool of good photography. If you have a single point of interest in your scene, a wide-angle lens can easily make it too small and distant. Let's look at a few photographs fresh from the scanner.

In this following photo, the temple entrance is very distant and occupies a rather small part of the resulting photograph. It is however the pseudo-symmetry of this image, the reflections on wet ground, and the leading line of the people that still make it work fairly nicely. I don't know if I like the helicopter in the sky, but I didn't want to remove it as it seems the people are looking at it.

Tokyo, 2010 - Kodak BW400CN

In the next photograph, I wanted to show the size of the fortress. It gets somewhat cluttered, however the clutter is created by repetitive shapes. That's not a no-no in my books.

Iraklion, Crete, 2010 - Kodak BW400CN

Wide-angle treatment can be effective for close-ups, too. You can either put some distance between your main subject and the background, or you can play the clutter card to your advantage. In this photo, I wanted to show the large pile of Hello Kitty's inside this UFO catcher.

Tokyo, 2010 - Kodak BW400CN

This is a nice lens on the digitals, too. Here's a past post featuring a photo with the Leica M8.

The colour and the shape

Three cities, three cameras, three photographs.

Hamburg, 2009 - Epson R-D1, 1/450, ISO400

Paris, 2010 - Leica M8, 1/360, ISO160

Tampere, 2010 - Kodak BW400CN