Recently Biljana and I went out in the evening to get some practice with our new equipment, and for the most part all the pictures we’ve taken were shit, until it was so late in the evening that the light started fading fast, to the point where we barely saw where we’re going anymore. At that point, the smoke in the air, sunset and the blue hour combined, and since Biljana’s Canon could pull off ISO 12800, and my Sony could pull off ISO 6400, not to mention IS, we could hand-hold stuff that would usually require a tripod, but I’m sure I couldn’t take those pictures with a tripod, because they were too interactive and happened in the moment; basically, she used her 105mm Sigma macro lens as a short telephoto to pick out details from afar, while I used the 16-35mm wideangle to get the wider context. Essentially, she took pictures and I took pictures of her taking the pictures, including what she was shooting, but in context.

This is her picture of the town fort/church, where people used to take refuge when attack was signalled from the watch tower with the view of the point at sea from which threats loomed.

This is my picture with the wide angle, of her in the foreground and the fort in the background.

This is Biljana’s second shot, toward the town centre, with the boat in the foreground and the bridge in the top left, balancing the diagonal. The color palette she chose very much resembles the Fuji Astia/Sensia low saturation slide film, similarly contrasty but with much more shadow detail, because slide film is just dead there. It also somewhat resembles Kodak Portra low-contrast negative film, but exposed on the low side. The low contrast accentuates the serenity of the scene, the calm before the night.

This is my version – Biljana in the foreground, checking the photo she had just taken on the screen, with the scene in the background. I chose a different color palette – where she went for the subtlety of low-contrast and low-saturation, I did the opposite, cutting into the dark tones and making them bleed ink.

I don’t know whether there are any conclusions to be taken from this exercise, but I thought it’s interesting how differently we captured the same scene; she went for the telephoto while I went for the wideangle, and despite the fact that those two cameras can render color and detail almost identically, we went for completely different palettes and looks in the end.