Manchester Leica Walk Around

In early June this year I went to Manchester again to do some street photography in the city and media city. The reason for heading this way was to take advantage of a free session with a Leica expert from Leica Store Manchester. This was as a result of my purchase of a Leica Q3 Digital camera, which came with an hour session walking the streets of Manchester asking questions on technical, technique and general photography info.

Normally I would be offered lessons, sessions for support with equipment and not bother causing the hassle of asking for it. Mainly due to not wanting to put anyone out, and a little imposter syndrome meaning that I’m not really deserving of the experts time. In line with my comfort zone experiments I organised to go across and spend time with someone called Stuart from the store.

I attended the store and entered a bit nervously, feeling like someone who wears Adidas Sambas walking into a Christian Louboutin shoe shop. The guys in the shop were really kind and greeted me, asking me how I was finding my camera and what I was using it for. When I was introduced to Stuart i asked him a couple of the questions that I had written down.

The questions I had lined up were:

  • Focus Selection Issues – Tracking v Face v Zone
  • Zone Focusing Settings and results
  • Soft images coming from 1/500 images

Walking out of the shop we entered the streets of Manchester and Stuart took me on a walk whislt we discussed Street photography and I had a chance to see how some of my technique was not too dissimilar from his. In terms of walking past people it is not always required to raise the camera up, you can shoot from the hip and still get some great candid shots. A couple of times I spotted him doing this, waited for the subject to pass by and then asked him if that’s what he was doing, it usually was. Ha ha, some of the random movements I do with the camera and eye direction diversions I also saw him doing.

The first shot I made whilst walking along was this, of a woman driving a car through a corner very slowly.

Woman Turning The Corner

Around the corner from. here we were taking some photos of Eurobins, in bright colours against a dank coloured alleyway, when I spotted a chef from a restaurant hanging out by the back door having a smoke. I approached him and asked if I could capture an image of him, I usually ask “can I make a photo of you?” rather than “take a photo” as it sounds less intrusive.

He agreed but put out his cigarette and then posed by the graffiti strewn back doorway. He was kind and ok with having his photo captured by random strangers. Stuart came and joined me too and I bet he took way better photos than I did as I had my settings wrong with the shutter speed set to 1/500th of a second.

Smokin’ Chef.

After leaving the scene of this, Stuart told me that he was not used to having confident people walking around with him, and he didn’t usually see his clients asking randomers for photos like that, which I took as a huge compliment and felt buoyed by it.

A bit further down the back streets of the city centre we came across a group of workers having a break on the back steps of their shop/restaurant so again I asked them for some photos and they were a bit sceptical at first with the older guy shying away from the photos. Once I’d made a couple of images of his younger colleagues I asked him again and he obliged with a pose leaning on a wheelie bin.

We continued walking along the riverside and came across a few people to snap. I was talking to him about my questions and asked him about the auto-focusing issues I sometimes see with the face tracking, person detection etc. I often see the focus jump to someone in the rear of the photo and miss the main subject. He agreed that it was sometimes a bit hit and miss for street photography but is usually spot on when using it for portraits etc. For me I find it easier to use tracking when on auto, but i also try and use Zone focussing where the lens focal distance is set to a plane, depending on the aperture of the lens. The focus can easily be changed from infinity to a closer up image once you get used to moving the focus tab on the Summilux 28mm f/1.7 lens to accomodate for the distance of the subject but I’m still learnign this skill. Stuart said that this is auseful way of preparing for photos but can indeed be tricky to get right, as anticipating distances and apertures is a knack you pick up through experience.

Colourful Walker

We continued wandering around, talking about other photographers and his own style of photography. He was mainly into Landscape and Street photography, he lives in the Peak district and spends time in the area making landscape images. His instagram profile is also full of some wonderful portraits and he is no doubt a superb photographer.

We carried on further, eventually heading back to the store and I was asking him my last question about 1/500th images being soft and he explained soemthing that is so obvious that I should have already worked it out. When I’m takign a 1/500 picture, I’m trading my exposure triangle so that the aperture is wide open, and the ISO remains lower. The wide open aperture means I’ve a very slim depth of field and if I get it slightly wrong it’ll be way off. He suggested that I turn my ISO up to 400 and then try it with a lower shutter speed and a narrower aperture. I will try this in the future too.

One of the other questions not noted above that I came up with was preference to the Electronic Viewfinder or the LCD screen. Normally with my Q2 and now Q3 I have it set to EVF Extended so unless I hold it up to my eye, the EVF and LCD stay off. This I find saves me lots of wasted battery life. I have the mode to cycle through EVF/LCD/EVF Extended/Auto on my thumb wheel button to select if I want to see the lcd for isntance. If you open the screen a little it automatically changes to LCD as that’s the only reason you’d be opening your screen from the back.

Stuart says he does a similar thing and changes between modes depending on what he is shooting and whether he’s shooting to his eye or hip etc..

Near to the end of the tour and experience we stopped asI’d seen some more brightly coloured bins in an alleyway when a young woman asked us for a light. I don’t smoke but stuart offered her his lighter and asked if we could capture a photo or two of her. She agreed straight wawya and said that she “was in the trade”, which I took to mean modelling. She took instruction from Stuart well and I was a bit out of my comfort zone as I don’t do a lot of portraiture etc.

After this it was back to the shop where we exchanged Insta profiles and I had a quick look at a Leica M6 on the shelf. I’ve been looking at these film cameras for about two years as a possible replacement for my old Canon A1 35mm camera. They looked super nice and I had a bit of spiel from the guys in the shop but at £3k it was a bit too much for me, especially after treating myself to the Q3.

After leaving the shop, I went next door into Camera Crib which is another shop that specialise in film cameras as well as some digital. After I’d looked at th eprice of Kodak Portra I left, quickly, then headed around the city a bit more, around the library and then on the tram to Media City, but I didn’t have very long in this area. I did notice that there was an Imperial War Museum and a Lowry Museum in Salford Quays so logged it in the brain for a future visit.

Below are a few photos of the rest of the day.

Matt Stuart Street Photography Workshop

At the end of June I had signed up and paid £450 for a weekend in London shooting with famous street photographer Matt Stuart, who has multiple great books out on street photography, and someone who I have admired for a couple of years since I started getting into street.

The idea was to go down the night before stay in london, I had a nice little airbnb in chinatown set up and then meet up with Matt and the other “students” for the weekend whilst picking up skills, hints, tips and feedback from him and the others on the course wiht the aim of improving my photography.

Unfortunately, my wife had a health crisis in the middle of June which meant I was unabel to leave her at home without support so I had to cancel the workshop. I left it unti lthe day before so as to see if I could squeeze out in time but alas it was not to be. Don’t get me wrong, I was gutted but at the same time I needed to be there for my wife and my family. Matt and his team were really great about it and have offered for me to join the next workshop in London when he returns to the capital. I am looking forward to this and was exceptionally envious when I saw the photos coming through at the weekend of people on the workshop.

It’ll all work out in the end.

On the whole though the time in Manchester was a good day out and I would repeat this again in August when I returned to visit the Batman Unmasked exhibition and the Imperial War Museum. More about that in another post though.

The time with the Leica expert was well worth it, and I’m really glad I took advantage of that part of the deal. I feel like it helped me and improved my self confidence, and reduced the imposter syndrome further.

It is always great to get out into the street and I feel like ai lucked out with more usable photos than I would normally get. maybe it was the influence of Stuart!!

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