Arriving to the market was definitely not a disappointment, it has about 500 stands, covering everything from food, home appliances, clothes, shoes, music and more. I started wondering around, waiting for some nice photo opportunities.

Photo opportunities in a market are plentiful, but I did encounter two main challenges. The first was picking human subjects- walking around with an SLR isn’t very low profile, and while some people don’t mind it at all, a lot will prefer to stay out of your frame, and will either politely move away or simply tell you so. One of the solutions was to focus on hands and transactions,  the other was to put people in the background.

Less challenging but just as satisfying, some of the commodities in the market make for excellent photographic subject, and when it comes to fruit and vegetables, they hardly ever protest. Color and textures of different products are easily accessible and supply great compositions to play with.

As for the gear, I was using my solid entry level Olympus e-420 with its 14-45 kit lens. I’d recommend sticking to either your mid range zoom lens or switch to a wider one. If you want to come closer to an object, you can just walk up, and using a tele-lens will limit your wide angle snap shots.

Markets to give a glimpse into local culture, and if you don’t find cultural enlightenment, you can at least catch a glimpse of the local commodities. I have to say my strongest memories from the Den Haag market were food, and shoes.

Did you find an interesting market and photographed it? Post it on The Wide Lens

Unfortunatly, a few tests I made indicated the Microsoft Internet Explorer does not always open the effects as it should- resulting in either opening the image in a new window or showing an “error on page” which isn’t really an error…

While I’ll make an effort that IE does work better with The Wide Lens, for best viewing results, and also for general purpose web browsing, I strongly recommend using Mozilla FireFox 3- it’s free, reliable, quick and has loads of great addons.

To download FireFox simply click on the big FireFox logo I’ve placed on the right sidebar.

Tal

Without going to any philosophical connotations, windows make a somewhat unordinary photography objects. Composition-wise, they’re all flat, practically two-dimensional. Furthermore, the conventional window-shots  are simply a frame within a frame, just like this window in Olbia, Sardinia.

A fine window photo would then usually be one that might present an interesting color composition (unless there’s a cat sitting on the windowsill). In these three other photos I tried different approaches for these problematic-though-intriguing objects.

You too can feature your photos on The Wide Lens, here’s how.

I had the opportunity to get into a concert of a few unknown local rock bands, some excellent and some will definitely raise an eyebrow with the average listener, like myself.

The interesting point was actually the venue- a huge loft over an old warehouse, with the band located right in the middle, and a set of extremely strong lighting which could make the entire room brighter than daylight. The lights were effective enough to point out that sunglasses are recommended.

Hearing about this set of performances at the particular set up translated clearly into a photo opportunity. Equipped with my trusty, though somewhat slow Olympus C-8080, I headed out.

The lighting conditions kept changing dynamically throughout the night and every few seconds. Which made the use of flash virtually impossible to set up in time. Aperture priority and lots of snapshots became the immediate tactic, while also trying to get the lighting, musicians and crowed into the composition. Black and white post processing also seemed to add a bit of atmosphere to some images.

Beyond the special event and unique lighting conditions, this was my only attempt so far with band photography, a genre I encounter quite a bit at personal galleries of photographers. It’s actually fun an challenging, as the combination of items and composition is both endless and dynamic.

Have you tried band photography as well? Why not let us all see?

Starting with the core, I’ve updated the WordPress version to 2.7.1. On it’s own it won’t show, but hopefully it improves overall performance- always good to stay updated.

On the main page- I’ve added the featured content gallery which will always show the last 3 posts or so (if you think of a better number and have a reason, let me know).

On the sidebar- I adjusted the position of some elements, but more then that added a large and clear button for The Wide Lens RSS feed and also for the respective twitter page. Those together with the e-mail subscription allows you to follow updates on the site in 3 ways besides simply visiting.

That’s it for now,

Hope you like the overall look&feel, comments are welcome.

Tal