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Artistic Street Photography

Night Street Photography using Sony A7 on Bourbon Street, New Orleans, LA/Dec.2017 craigcurriephotography.com

Artistic Street Photography is fun, and the best part is that ‘there are no rules’ to follow.  From long exposures with light trails to adding your own background, anything goes with this genre.

It’s a no judgement zone – so to speak. Blurry subjects, lens flares or just bad pictures in general are all welcome in this melting pot of photo art.

The video includes photos from New Orleans and some from the city of Paducah, a small quaint town in the Midwest.

I hope the video and photos inspires someone out there. I remember my first time when I saw a long exposures and ridiculously overly processed images for the first time; it inspired me to try and create my own works.

The camera used was the A7 Sony full-frame with the 24-70mm F3.5 Sony kit lens and the Rokinon 14mm  F2.8 wide angle lens.

BELOW PHOTOS: New Orleans, LA

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Rokinon 14mm F2.8 used for Gothic Church

Rokinon 14mm F2.8 on A7 Sony ILCE used for Gothic Church/ craigcurriephotography.com

The Rokinon 14mm F2.8 FE e-mount lens was used on Sony A7 full frame camera to take these super wide angle photos of this historic gothic Church built in the 1800s in Paducah, Kentucky.

This is considered an economy lens that goes by three names: Rokinon, Samyang and Bower. They are all the same exact lens depending on what countries they are sold in.

The 14mm is a fixed lens meaning the focal length (14mm) is not adjustable. This focal length is extreme, maybe too extreme for some.

These photos were taken around sunset with cloud cover to boot. But with the big F2.8 aperture, it had no problem gathering enough light to brighten up those dark shadows a bit.

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Using Sony 85mm F1.8 for Pet Portraits

VIDEO: I used the Sony 85mm F1.8 lens on a A7 Sony camera to take portraits of  numerous pets during a dog show in Paducah, Kentucky. In short, I was quite happy with the results.

The organizers didn’t allow photographers to use any flash or lighting equipment since it could scared the dogs and that was perfectly understandable. It turned out that Paducah’s convention center had really nice overhead lighting, so everything worked out great.

I kept the aperture settings wide open at 1.8 since I really wanted to see how it would perform with the natural overhead lighting.

Please bare in mind that neither my old A7 Sony full-frame or the 85mm lens had any kind of built in image stabilization. However, since the 1.8 lens is fast, hand held shots came out okay.

I tried to keep the shutter speed at around 1/ 170 to prevent camera shake. The formal calculation for the correct shutter speed  is focal length 85mm x 2 = 170. The calculation worked out well but 1/500 shutter speed was even better.

I kept my ISO on Auto most of the time since I just wanted to talk with people and have some fun.

In conclusion, the Sony 85mm F1.8 performed beyond my expectations.

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Pet Portraits natural light

These are pet portraits taken with a 85mm F1.8 Sony Lens on an A7 ILCE full-frame Sony camera. No flash or lighting equipment was allowed during this particular dog show but the overhead lights (ambient lighting) were more than enough for a fast lens. All photos were set to F1.8 for maximum background blur.