Christmas Market Time
The three months ending the old year and beginning the new (November to January) are usually the slowest photography months for me, usually because the light is pretty much non-existent bar a few days when we have clear skies and (maybe) some snow covering the ground. Those days are good for photography, but otherwise…perhaps not so much. I usually put my camera away for much of this period since I find the lack of light so uninspiring. However, to combat these photographic doldrums and feelings of “why bother” I ventured into the center of Malmö to see if the ongoing Christmas market stalls and people there would inspire me.
The sun was back...for a few hours at least!
The forecast was for a Saturday of potential sunshine, so given that November often is about as dark and dreary as it can be here in southern Sweden I decided to head into central Malmö to enjoy the streets for a few hours in good (hopefully anyway) light, fit for some street photography.
Out there at night...
A second blog post in less than two weeks’ time…what is this? Is there suddenly a return to old times when I posted several times a month? I don’t know honestly, but I figured that I’d post something of my recent stroll through the twilight and first hour of darkness in Malmö. I was there for a board meeting at my photo club and some other errands and figured I’d arrive a little early and give myself some time to walk around with my Fujifilm XT-3 and a 35 mm 2.0 lens.
Shooting high-speed film at night
For the longest time I’ve had a roll of medium format Ilford Delta Pro 3200 in my film stash, because I thought it’d be interesting to see how a high speed film would do in my Kiev 60 camera. I didn’t find a good moment to shoot it though, because I haven’t really taken that humongous camera out at night before. When a couple of friends and I went to the Tivoli amusement park in Copenhagen in Denmark a few weeks ago (I posted my digital shots from that outing in the blog a few weeks ago) I figured why the heck not give it a go with some high speed film in the “tank” too. Sure enough…while giving myself a bit of a shoulder ache from the weight of the camera in the bag I did shoot the first half of the roll there.
Christmas Market time...again
During the month of December (just like in every other part of the world I am sure) there's a tradition for Christmas markets around these parts of southernmost Sweden. I've been to a number of them through the years, and this year I chose the one at Jakriborg, a faux-medieval housing area a short commuter train ride away from Lund. It has a definite North German feel to it with its narrow buildings with steep roofs, even though it was all built in the 1990s.