Daily Inspiration #441 by Patrick Touma

Hey Steve,

I recently graduated from the ‘German high school’ and then made a trip to Toronto to relax and shoot after the long and exhausting finals. It was a great week, I could relax a shoot photos all day, mostly street photos, which are not really legal in Germany. Slowing down really improves your images, also does thinking outside the box. If you are experimenting, you can create amazing photographs.

My camera (Sony NEX-6) withstood rain and two storms with dust and water from Lake Ontario, it handled everything well, although it is missing any kind of weather sealing. It is built surprisingly sturdy and it’s definitely an upgrade from my ‘old’ camera, the NEX-5n.

The lens used in the shots was the Sony 50mm f/1.8 for E-Mount, my most used lens overall. Soon I will move on to university, my life will change a lot, but I hope photography will remain an important part of my life.

Keep your site running, it’s a great inspiration and source of information for a lot of people.

Greetings from Germany, take care,

Patrick Touma

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18 Comments

  1. I adjusted the curves in LR, stumbled upon this look by accident. Added grain and lowered contrast, I didn’t use VSCO here…

  2. The first image might have been better served by more graininess rather than low contrast.

  3. Funny this VSCO phenomenon. The camera makers work so hard to give people cameras and lenses the produce excellent sharpness, contrast and natural tones. People buy the best cameras and lenses they could buy and yet pay $99 to buy a filter and turn their state of the art cameras into camera size instagramming devices.

    Nice photos but its just a VSCO and it ruins memory of the time, place and the honestly 2011-2014 will be remembered in photography world as the era where VSCO ruined everyone’s photos. Much like mullets from the 80s.

  4. Very nice photos and overall feel. Especially the 2nd one. I grew up in Toronto but haven’t been back in over 10 years. Do you have a website so I can get in touch re the 2nd photo?

  5. Certainly nice moody images. #1 could have been very powerful, were it not for the (I think) misplaced focus, which should have been on the guy’s head.

  6. I like the first pic the best…nice mood to it. I don’t normally like the ‘low contrast’ treatment but your shots are pretty nice.

  7. Nice look to your photographs (and nice photographs as well :)), what kind of post-processing did you do if you don’t mind me asking?

    Regards

  8. I liked all three of your photos, especially because they were B&W and possessed that 1960’s feel of another era. The cab driver relaxing was great. And the skyline shots were cool since they captured a moment in time, a moment when you had just graduated one school to move on to university. Forty or fifty years from now you will be able to see how that place looked at that one moment in time and marvel over the vast changes that have occurred there, and in your life, since then. That’s one of the qualities that makes photography special. Keep up the nice work.

  9. Very nice pictures, like the processing.

    Street shooting in Germany is not illegal in itself, though. Granted, it is a legal “gray zone” as according tro german law, everyone owns the rights to their own image. If you get a model release, you have no problems. Shooting crowd scenes should be unproblematic too. Also, there has to be made the fine distinction between a person’s right to their own image and the creation of art (or freedom of press), which is also one of the fundamental rights in the german constitution. One may outweigh the other.

    In practice, I don’t think street photographers should run into trouble over here, except maybe when you’re too obtrusive and people try to stop you taking their picture. Then you would be legally obliged to delete it. In my experience people are pretty relaxed about having their picture taken in public, so I wouldn’t worry too much.

    regards,
    Mathias

  10. Nice shots Patrick!

    I was in Toronto on July 6th, when they were hit with a MASSIVE rain storm with continuous torrential rains, wide-spread flooding, and power outages through most of the city.

    Not having much else to do (and little common sense!) I spent several hours on the streets with my NEX-6, which I kept in a plastic shopping bag that the people at ‘Downtown Camera’ were nice enough to give me when I entered their store looking like a drowned rat… taking it out to get shots when I could find some shelter under an overhang, or when the rains briefly let-up.

    Unfortunately, the camera got quite damp. Fortunately (like yours) it survived and performed very well!

    I wouldn’t recommend anyone taking the non-weather-sealed NEX-6 out in heavy downpours, but I can attest that mine ‘took a lickin’ and kept on tickin’ 🙂

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/mars_observer/9243994293/
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/mars_observer/9246842419/
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/mars_observer/9367950557/

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