So I finally did my first Street Photography POV video, and I did it within a span of an hour on a random walk around Mandaluyong. Watching a bunch of Photography POV videos over the past years and itching to make one myself – I can now proudly say that I made it! Well, I tried to make a decent one at least. I’ve always wanted to do a Photography POV vlog for some time now though I never really had the guts nor the equipment to produce one. But all of that changed when I made a Php 3,000 GoPro purchase. And as you can tell by my unnecessary price bragging on this post, I am very happy with that purchase. There is nothing I love more than acquiring gears other than acquiring gears for a steal price. And this was a steal price (cc: My wife). But enough with the GoPro (which I will review in a future blog) and let’s get back to the POV.
To be honest, I’m actually not satisfied with the quality of this video. I did imagine doing better. Although it was a good first try. A lot of technical issues arose post-production, especially when dealing with the GoPro’s mic/audio. Plus, I have to deal with my profound consciousness when shooting in the streets, added by the fact that this time I needed to talk to “myself” while photographing. Also, I wasn’t really doing a lot of photography before I ventured into this street photography walk and without practice, one can feel a little bit lost or out of touch. In my defense, shooting this video was more impromptu than planned. Oh wait, most of my videos are impromptu – well I’ll be damned.
Since I was doing street photography, I needed to be inconspicuous. Never mind the fact that I have a GoPro mounted on my chest but I did bring the smallest camera I own – The Fujifilm x100s. Aside from stealth, I also needed to be fast so I set my camera to auto shutter speed, had a pretty nice high ISO at 800 speed, and controlled my exposure through my aperture. I also had the camera on manual focus (zone focusing) making the x100s practically a point-and-shoot. This way, I can quickly take a photo and have my camera tucked away in a beat as if nothing happened. And boy did that technique backfired on me big time. Most of the photos I took that day came out blurry especially the ones that involved people as a subject. I did try to set my shutter speed to not go lower than 1/250th of a second but my nerves just outways that speed. But hey, this is a lesson learned and at least I know what to tweak next time.
Although I wish I did the Photowalk in some other place and had more time to spend, I did warmed up in the later part. I think an hour of street photography is not enough for me to get conditioned and start shooting comfortably. At least I did what I had to do and know that I’ll be doing this again soon. I did have fun after all and the experience is always worth the fuss. I also thought that I got some pretty decent photos of the urban landscape which was a good incentive.
Anyway, I’ll definitely be doing this again and looking forward to doing it in my favorite place to shoot – Manila. That city just has that character that I have always been attracted to. Once again, thank you for reading my blog and if you want to watch the full video of my first photography POV be sure to check it out below and subscribe.
Salamat.
King 