I carry a camera pretty much every where I go. At the very least I have one in my car. When I travel out of my home base of Atlanta, Georgia the kit is a bit more than just a camera. Walking about a new place requires a bit more gear than the camera. It’s important that there is not too much gear. To limit what I carry on any urban adventure I begin with the Think Tank Street Walker backpack. The smallest version. If you pack for every possible shooting situation, you’ll be dog tired by noon. So the first rule for urban adventure photography is “Think small.”
Lenses
Normally I travel with a Canon 5DMk2. On walk abouts, I leave the battery grip in the hotel. Sigma is my lens provider of choice. I carry three lenses—a 12-24mm f/4.5 – f/5.6 DG HSM II, a 24-70mm f/2.8 IF EX DG HSM, a 70-200mm f/2.8 EX DG OS HSM and a 2X teleconverter. This covers practically any situation I might encounter. Usually, not always though, I keep the 12 to 24mm on the camera. That’s the lens I’m using for this post. If you shoot a cropped sensor check out Sigma’s stunning 8-16mm f/4.5 – f/5.6 DC HSM for similar results.
Art & Architecture
Urban spaces have great or at least interesting structures. Consider this interior view of the Crystal City metro station outside Washington, D.C. At 12mm the angle of view is close to 121º.
This is the ceiling of the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. Photos like this one find me lying on my back with the camera pointing straight up.
Continuing the theme of shooting lying down, this kinetic art piece in the Hirshorn Sculpture Garden becomes more interesting thanks to the unique angle.
Here’s another sculpture… a two story tall statue of Marilyn along with her admirers gathered around her ankles. It’s in Chicago, by the way.
This lens is perfect when a tilt-shift isn’t available. This building portrait was made on a tripod. The camera is completely level. That’s to say that the sensor plane is parallel to face of the building. The lens is set at 19mm.
Nightlife
The 12-24 works amazingly well in low light situations too. These performers at Nashville’s storied Stage on Broadway were so close I could have easily touched the guitar in the foreground.
Tootsie’s is another Nashville nightspot that’s been going strong for over fifty years. I spotted this woman looking toward the back of the bar. I braced my elbows on the table, framed the shot, took a deep breath, let it halfway out and squeeeeeeezed the shutter to capture what a viewer would expect to experience on a visit.
Angle of View
Reading tech specs from lens companies is all well and good if they mean something. I thought I’d close this blog with an example of what those twelve millimeters below the view 24mm brings to a scene. This is a Ford Tri-Motor airplane that hangs in the Air and Space Museum in D.C. 24mmm gives a good view of the three motors. 12mm shows the whole aircraft. All four images were made from the same position.
In future posts here at Hunt’s I’ll share the rest of my walk about kit for urban photography.
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