A little intro to my choice of camera.
It was a pleasant day for a photo-walk and I wanted to run a few tests on my old Fuji x20 camera after giving it a firmware upgrade and adjusting the settings. I bought the camera in 2014 and so it’s getting old now but it remains a beautifully made small and lightweight fixed lens digital compact. It has a 12 MP 2/3 type X-trans CMOS II sensor. Small and old by today's standards, but perfectly serviceable.
I like to shoot square images (1:1 ratio) in black and white and the settings on the x20 allow me to do this easily with Red, Green and Yellow filters if required in B&W mode. I must add that the x20 shoots lovely colour also, but my preference is for monochrome.
I decided to make my test shots in the Japanese Garden in Calderstones Park. I wanted to see how the foliage, textures and tones would appear post-production. The little camera’s 2/3 sensor can sometimes loose the highlights on a sunny day. Using Manual or Aperture Priority settings enabled me to deliberately shoot a little darker, assuming that I would correct the exposure a little in post-production. See below. Only a modest exposure adjustment was required. The focal point was the rock.
In the Zone
I arrived in the park and found it very busy for a Monday morning. A funfair had been set up in the park and this had attracted groups and families as the schools had not yet returned. I headed for the walled garden area which became far quieter, thankfully, and finally into the Japanese Garden where I found I was completely alone. The distant funfair noises barely audible now. I began to make my photographs.
The stillness and quiet of this beautiful garden a marked contrast to the busy park and funfair in the distance. I saw in the natural forms and shapes plenty of potential to both test the camera and hopefully make a few interesting photographs. As I walked around the small walled garden taking photographs I found myself ‘in the zone’. A term a professional photographer once described to me as the moment when you are simply making pictures with no external distractions, moving from one scene or subject to the next in a smooth and natural way. I found my camera, the garden and myself in harmony.
I moved quietly from one small area to the next, looking carefully around me, composing the images in my mind first, before lifting the camera to press the shutter. The design and planting of the garden helped give rise to a feeling of inner calm. I hope this is reflected in some small way by the photographs I have made.
When walking in a forest or an open landscape I find this feeling of being ‘in the zone’ far easier to achieve but I recently attempted some 'street photography' and although it took quite a while longer, I found that achieving the same feeling in a busy urban environment was possible. I’m not saying this helps me make better photographs but at least for me, the experience is so much more satisfying and enjoyable.
