Park Life

Confidence is a preference for the habitual voyeur of what is known as (parklife)
And morning soup can be avoided if you take a route straight through what is known as (parklife)
John's got brewers droop he gets intimidated by the dirty pigeons
They love a bit of it (parklife)
Who's that gut lord marching... you should cut down on your porklife mate... get some Exercise

ALL THE PEOPLE
SO MANY PEOPLE
THEY ALL GO HAND IN HAND
HAND IN HAND THROUGH THEIR PARKLIFE

-Blur


Day 2 of the Street Photography Workshop.

Where I felt so on top of things yesterday, I felt totally upside down today. Not a disaster, but not what I had hoped for... I got to take Andrea Pacella's very own 50 Summicron APO out for test drive which was good fun and a great honor. The general word is that it is the best lens Leica has ever built and the most difficult to produce... Andrea's lens is from the very first batch that was produced about two years ago. Exciting! I don't know that my experience was all that positive though... and mostly (all) my fault trying to work on Hyperfocusing today in combination with the Leica M240 which I really haven't got the hang of or understand why different than my older M9. The M240 has the CMOS sensor and all the extra goodies like Live View and multiple focusing points. I didn't use Live View once and after yesterday's ambiguous experience I had set the M240 up in the most basic and similar way to the M9... to no avail. When I downloaded the photos the major part were blury. :( I am so dissappointed!!! Really not sure what went wrong... Hyperfocusing in theory should leave a major part of the image in focus though slowing down the shutter speed with a larger aperture.

Anyway, a few did make it. Especially the ones with a static setting.

I had a very nice compliment this morning as I was asked by the guest Leica videographer, Marco Casino, if he and his companion could follow me around for a while. heck, sure!!! Marco has just been awarded the World Press 2014 Multimedia award for a continuing project he is following in Africa called, "Train Surfing". pretty cool!!!

It was much harder than I thought... it is one thing to go out with another photographer and walk side by side, stop once in a while and snap snap a few pictures. A total other thing when two guys are stalking you - sometimes running ahead or to the side - and trying to anticipate a shot I may take. Sometimes, I was thinking... ok, he just went ahead because he sees a shot I am going to take... heck... what shot??? Of course, how should he know what is interesting or banal to me? haha... well, he is the professional! So, I found myself taking pictures of things I really didn't care about or even a bit under duress to perform. Othertimes, I just kept walking on hoping to find something of my own soon. hahaha Anyway, that lasted for the first couple hours and then I politely offered to strike out on my own to let them meet up with somebody else to take their turn. :) A big thanks to Marco and Andrea(?) for spending time with me and being so laid back and nice.

So, today, I give you a bit of park life. I didn't intend to go here, but Marco was keen on it. I had wanted to patrol some of the older churches in downtown to take pictures of the older Milanese as they made their way out after Sunday mass and towards home. How boring!!! Such a nice day, lots of people out and about.... haha. oops, do I really act so old? NO! of course not.

ps... the key to this picture is the girl is giving me a consentual smile and looking at me to immortalize the moment, instead of telling me to bugger off and mind my own business!

pss... that is one of the tips and tricks I was taught this weekend. smile and smile

psss.... two minutes before, same sort of picture of a handsome young man reading a book on his beach towel got the second response. haha, I guess I wasn't good looking enough to win his heart. :)