Street photography in Portland
I used to walk the Old Port of Portland, Maine at least once a week. Since the pandemic upset everything, I don’t get into town as often as I’d like, so last week I made a point to practice some street photography in Portland. On the weekend. In January, when tourists still inexplicably wander around ooo-ing and ahh-ing at the same sort of things they can see back in Boston or New York. Curse this awesome town that I also love to ooo and ahh.
Anyway, I particularly wanted to focus on including people in my shots. I strapped on the X100F and the X-T5, the latter equipped with the 50-140mm f2.8. Interestingly, I found I took more photos with the telephoto, capturing details and people from afar.
For some of these I set up in one narrow alleyway and shot people walking by the other end. I tried to exposure bracket a few to compensate for the extreme highlights, but it is difficult to get the subject where you want them since Lightroom only includes them from the last exposure when they’re nearly out of frame. If I’d had a wider field of view so I could predict when people would enter the frame, I could’ve timed that better. Not a complete loss, though, since some of the unbracketed shots turned out fine.
