Granada

As you might have noticed, I changed my photography style a little bit. As an experiment to learn composition I switched my camera to a black and white mode, not to be distracted by all the colours in my viewfinder when I take a picture. A side effect of it was that I got a lot of black and white JPGs to go along with the raw files that I’d normally use.

I noticed that for certain types of shots, I really like the look. Like those presented here, where we have a lot of contrast and the sun is strong, but not coming vertically down. Especially, when photographing in the cities.

I photograph differently in cities than I do outside. When I’m taking pictures of landscapes, I always carry around my 18-135mm zoom lens, to be able to get the perfect composition. With landscapes, zooming with your feet is rarely a possibility. In the cities, however, I carry around my small 18mm lens. Originally, I did so to force myself to get closer to my subjects - this wide lens doesn’t really show much from afar. But I grew to like the look and the feel of carrying around a small camera with a really small lens.

All of the pictures in this post have been taken with this lens. It’s cheap, regularly gets poor reviews, and I love it. I’ve bought it twice by now (after the first one got stolen).

Granada is a great city to do some street photography. There’s a picturesque old islamic town, that looks like a medina taken straight out of Marocco. There’s a lot of old, powerful architecture monuments to contrast small people with. There’s a lot of tourists, colours, and vagabonds on the streets.

Finally, there’s the Alhambra with its beautiful details.

Written by Wojciech Ogrodowczyk who takes photos, climbs mountains, and runs Brains & Beards to help companies deliver better mobile applications faster.