Shooting landscapes from the hip. Shooting everything from the hip. Oh, my mistake, I actually looked through the finder. It just made more sense.

 

A few more images from my hiking adventure yesterday at Enchanted Rock State Natural Area, outside of Fredericksburg, Texas by about 14 miles. Wonderful place for a rock climb or a challenging hike. Bring a camera, there's a lot to see....

A lot of vlogging street shooters are presenting their arguments these days for shooting from the hip. In other words trying to be a furtive and secretive about taking photos of people who are unaware they are inadvertent subjects of the photographer. Okay. So I tried the same thing with landscapes and all I got were crooked horizons and misplaced focus. Fair enough. It seems like the same problem one sees with so much street work. 

I will say though that none of the landscapes I saw yesterday were intimidated or made to feel awkward and abused by my camera's shoot from the hip gaze. The hills and rocks and flowers just took it in stride. 

While I have not had much practice shooting from the hip I have found, in the short term, that I'm not comfortable with the practice --- when it comes to landscapes. It's the ole Heisenberg Theory Catch-22. Observation changing the object. Or maybe it's Schrodinger's Cat all over again...never sure if I'm getting a great shot or a dead cat.  I'm no physicist so I don't know. Or, perhaps I can't know...

I also tried to hold the camera at arm's length and squint through the bright light at the screen on the back of my camera. The way a man might hold a really stinky diaper as far from his face as possible while running to place it in a bucket of other stinky diapers. But that didn't work well either. 

The optical finder at the top left of the camera (as you correctly hold it) was a much better option; at least for me. But regardless of approach or technique I certainly had fun shooting Not Mannequins yesterday. It was just different enough to feel novel to me. Maybe camera makers designed eye level finders because they work so well for so many of the conditions under which we find ourselves taking photographs. Or maybe they just like including unnecessary features...  I love my Sigma fp. I just wish it had come with a very small, very easy to use, EVF. But then again, that's why I use rangefinder cameras and EVF based cameras for so much of my work. 

Going all "Stinky Baby Diaper" hold just doesn't hold as much appeal for me. But YMMV.  

The branch that looked like a snake at first glance...

I stopped here to drink water from one of my three water bottles (all reusable, none disposable).

I stopped here to eat some trail mix. It was good. Little pieces of dried mangos, walnuts, almonds, peanuts and dried pumpkin seeds. Instant energy with a long energy buffer built in. 

I stopped here to finish drinking my coffee from the coffee shop in Fredericksburg, Texas.

All photos produced with a Leica M240 ME and the Voigtlander 50mm f2.0 APO lens. The VM.