Knowing that Ann was going to be away for a month or so, I told myself that I had to man-baby up and figure out how to not waste my time drowning in sorrow and self-pity (something us man-babies are good at). As Ann will tell you, I’m very much a person of routine. I’ll vary things up if I want or need to, but much of my life is routine because that allows me to focus on those things that I want to vary without the rest of my life becoming a mess. One of the things I told myself I need to keep doing is our morning walks. See, we consistently get up early and go for walks in our neighborhood. Not only does that keep us in a sleep/waking mode for our early morning photography sessions (what are those . . . oh yeah, hopefully we’ll be doing them again), but in Portugal, it’s probably the safest time to be walking on the streets (just watch out for those bread delivery drivers!). The only question I had was, what was I going to do during my walks to keep them interesting. I could start podcasts again . . . or I could take along my new camera. You probably already know which one won out.

There are a few things with the new camera that I wanted to try out, and this seemed like the perfect way to do it. For starters there is just getting a feel for the camera. How it operates. Which direction do you rotate the lens to focus closer? How to change a setting in the menu? How slow of a shutter speed can I hand-hold it? Getting to a point where your fingers instinctively do what they need to do is valuable in photography where time is often of the essence.

My morning walks would also allow me to explore a feature I’d never really thought much about with the landscape work we do, where we’re pretty much on a tripod all the time and will photograph at the lowest ISO possible whenever possible to get the highest quality of image and widest dynamic range. Well, the Monochrom has the ability to render a decent image at insanely high ISOs. Most “noise” in a photographic image is “color noise” that results in weird colored textures, particularly in darker areas of a scene. Well, since the Q2MR has no color, all it has to deal with is . . . I don’t even know what the other type of noise is called, but that’s it. From my first foray out, I can honestly say that I think the noise from the Q2MR sensor at 25,000 ISO is about the same as the noise from my Fuji X-Pro 2 at 3,200 ISO, and certainly at 6,400 ISO. It’s shocking how high the ISO can go and how much easier it is to clean up in black and white. And it’s true, as some reviewers have noted, the “noise” on the Monochrom is very much like B&W film grain.

Last, taking the camera along for walks will also push me to photograph things that are not what I usually photograph. Much like wandering the streets of Munich gave me very few (read: no) landscape photographs, I’m going to have to look at this environment differently. It’s a way to push myself, expand my eye and my thinking, and returning to that joy (and often disappointment) in not being highly confident of the what the results of pressing the shutter will be. In the end, it might also introduce some ideas worth pursuing when we get back to our favored landscapes.

So the morning after Ann departed for Oregon, I headed out, Q2MR in hand (well, actually in this really cool holster I have for it) looking for images. Fortunately, I had a few ideas in mind (from well before thinking about ,nonetheless getting, the Q2MR) so I at least had a few images I knew I wanted to attempt.

These are, like the first images in Munich, learning photographs. Learning about the camera, what it can do, what I might want to photograph, and how to make an interesting image in what is pretty much night-time. It didn’t take long for the thinking to kick in.

One of the things I quickly realized is that, as in Munich, I found reflections to be particularly appealing. This is only one of several photographs I made that had reflections in them. I wonder just how far I can explore that idea.

I also starting thinking in terms of exploring alternate light sources. This is something Ann and I have done consciously with landscape photographs, knowing that when the full moon is out, it’s a rather intense light source and a landscape can be very well lit . . . well enough to photograph. Except here it became thinking in terms of street lights and house lights. As you can see, the patterns of shadows can be quite unusual. Fortunately, the Q2MR has an insanely high dynamic range (14.8 stops at base ISO) so it can generally handle the incredibly wide contrast between well lit and unlit areas. I just checked and there’s supposed to be a full moon on my birthday. I wonder what the streets might be like then?

Then there are things I’m interested in generally that also are apparent at night. Things like complex spaces (see the first photograph) and interesting textures. The real question becomes figuring out how to make them work in these very different conditions.

So, it’s a start. I suspect I’ll be varying my walks a bit more than usual, just to get a bit more variety in subject matter. But for a month-long exercise, these morning walk shots may be just the thing to keep me mentally engaged until Ann gets back.

Morning Walk Shots

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Morning Walk Shots

Morning Walk Shots 2

Playing with filters.

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