Vancouver street photo walk with Carl Curtis

Sunday, September 2, 2012.

Went for a street walk with the other half of Curtis James Photography around Vancouver armed with my Nikon D800 and only 24-70mm f2.8G. He was packing his D700 and same 24-70. If I had only one lense, this would be it. Over the years I've taken approximately 75%+ of all my photos with my Nikon 24-70 f2.8. Worth every penny at the current price of $1729 @ broadway camera.  We left his place and headed towards olympic village in search of anything and everything to photograph. We were packing light since we knew we'd be doing a lot of 

Nikon D800, 24-70mm 2.8 @ 44mm, ISO 400, f4.5, 1/1000

walking, although we both still rocked sandals. We winded through alleys scouting for potential locations for future shoots. Rather than snap pictures of blank walls and locations I had Carl be the model.  I'm more likely to remember a spot if I associate it with a good pic. Good thing he dressed for the occasion cause he ended up being in 90% of my shots! 

Not even a block into our walk and we encountered a lemonade stand. Mmmmm, Delicious!!! We had to stop and support this youngster and his hustle. Carl often interrogates these minors asking for there sales pitch and found this was a non-profit stand, but yet the proceeds were heading to childrens hospital! Quite a nobel cause. Two freshly squeezed glasses of delicious lemonade later and we were on our merry way. Set with my camera on Jpeg 20mp medium fine, which is more than enough for a personal walk around day. 

Carl had noticed before that scooby doo had been in his neigborhood. In fact he was correct and the Mystery Machine itself was parked just down the block. What would compel someone to turn there perfectly good 1980's GMC van into a Scooby mobile? I applaud them! Amazing. The van was parked half in the shadows so obviously Carl and I decided to compare the dynamic ranges of our two respective cameras. My D800 and his D700. Even from the tiny 3 inch LCD displays it was clearly no competition. The D800 excelled. I have certain complaints about the D800 which I won't get into right now, but dynamic range isn't one of them. 

After making our way through countless alleys and empty lots and I had the sad realization that many of our past favorite locations had been torn down to make way for new condo's. New concrete cookie cutter monstrosities that don't offer anything in the way of character. All within the last two years, so I can only imagine what the future holds for the last few remaining sanctuaries of old character buildings. On the way back to Carl's place with our feet aching from the lack of support and rubbing straps on our sandals. We decided to some action shots of Carl jumping in the middle of the street. It was nearly 6pm and the lighting was perfect casting west to east. The D800 was simply too slow at its dreary 4 fps. A moment when I wished I had brought my D3s and its machine gun like 9fps. I managed to grab a keeper none the less although it was almost unusable due to the D800 back focusing. A little sharpening and it was all good.