TREE.

This is a photo of a tree.

It was taken on a walk downtown. With a brand new camera. For some reason I’m infatuated with the look of film. I realize I’m not the only one; Fuji’s been making a pretty penny off those that feel the same way. I was walking around sporting the fancy new body (not me), set to a picture control setting that made it look like I was using something much older, and far less expensive. And as I was walking, I came across a series of trees planted along the side of the street, next to a big beige stucco building. I’m a sucker for a tree framed against a flat wall, so I had to give it a shot. It took a bit of sneaker shuffle to get everything arranged just right. It’s a very deliberate angle, with the camera being centered in front of the door. I had to get that far over so that the tree didn’t overlap with the awning. In fact, it took bit more leaning this way and that for there to be separation for everything in the scene. Getting everything in the shot and squared up had me looking like a bit of a dork, squatting and leaning forward and back, trying to pinpoint the proper shooting distance. And not for nothing, because the street was absolutely packed with people, and I’m sure they got their entertainment for the evening. I shot in jpg because that was kind of the whole point; I didn’t want to edit anything in post. Although I did do an 8x10 crop, cutting out a bunch of street at the bottom of that wasn’t important.

I’m having a hard time deciding if I like the look of this. In one way, it does sort of look like film. And by that I mean it looks like a crappy low-contrast print from a self-serve kiosk.