On the Light, again

First weekend in Houston after a while: not a good reason not to bring the camera with us and enjoy the local beauty. We are now transitioning to summer, the rainy season is knocking at the door so let’s take advantage of the clear skies as much as we can.

There’s a nice pub in Nasa Parkway: it faces the bayou and offers great sunsets with spectacular light. Inside the atmosphere is very intimate and, as you walk in, the big window to your right creates unique lighting effects: be ready with your camera or smartphone and capture the mood of that moment!

And this is another post inspired by the light: incredible how it plays with the surrounding environment, amazing how we are influenced, sometimes we don’t even realize it, and our mood changes or we feel differently… Or… am I the only one that feels like that?

Fuji quality is superb and albeit shot against the light, the dynamic range is so vast that details of the trees (in the shadows) are still visible and lights are not blown out but play together, lights and shadows, to compose the picture.

Lately I am willing to explore the film preset Kodak EKTAR 100: I’ve used it in the past in a limited number of works, mainly in Saudi Arabia, and with almo no customization from my side. Now I feel this beautiful preset based on the famous film can actually do more: in the pictures above I have reduced the contrast and made some modification to the grain and color balance to render a softer mood without loosing personality or falling into the faded looks of some other film and presets that I do not feel familiar with (an elegant way to say that I do not like them).

I’ve taken all the pictures with the Fujinon 35mm f/2 (ah, yes, I have purposedly omitted to mention that I’ve changed camera and moved up from the Fuji X-T1 to the X-T2… shame on me!).