Images shot with Yashica Yashinon 45mm f1.7 and processed with Vintage Film presets
What a difference a change of scenery makes. To both yourself and your photography.
You know what I’m talking about. There’s nothing to shoot where you live. Or nothing left to shoot. You’ve already been everywhere and shot everything.
You do less photography because you just can’t be arsed to go out with your camera. And then you take a trip somewhere and you remember why you love it so much.
I wrote a review of the Yashica Yashinon 45mm f1.7 the other week. In it, I talked about how much I liked the lens despite still getting used to the focal length after shooting with a 28mm Super-Takumar for so long.
I do like the lens. I enjoyed going out in Shanghai and getting shots for that review. But it was still shooting street photography in Shanghai.
Shanghai is a great place for street photography if you’ve never been here, but I’ve kind of run into the issue outlined above.
So, when I took a short trip to Wuxi, I took the Yashica Yashinon 45mm f1.7 with me to see how we’d get on in a fresh environment.
Lunch done, time to go shooting with the #yashinon pic.twitter.com/GsrY9P3F3O
— Lee Webb (@myfavouritelee) April 3, 2017
I just really enjoyed it.
The sun was out, which always helps. Helps with photography and helps with your mood. But there’s just that feeling of being in a different place that makes you want to shoot more.
Some people don’t like looking or acting like a tourist. But if you want to come home from your trip with a bunch of great photographs, it’s the best mindset to be in while you’re away.
Worry about not being a tourist when you’re not a tourist. When you’re back home.
Or consider acting like one when you head out with your camera there too if that’s the mindset that gives you the best photographs.
Getting used to the Yashica Yashinon 45mm f1.7
As mentioned earlier in this post, and also in the lens review itself, getting used to the focal length of the Yashica Yashinon 45mm f1.7 was taking a little more time than I’d anticipated.
Thankfully, it happened in Wuxi.
Despite the focal length, I was still going for depth where I could. Spotting a background and letting a subject step in, or forward, to give the shot some interest in the foreground too.
Also shooting mainly in colour, which the 45mm Yashinon seems to like. It felt like shooting monochrome would have been a waste of the light, too.
I can do that when it’s overcast.
We only really had 24 hours in Wuxi, so most of them were spent around the Nanchang Street and Nanchan Temple area.
It’s a very touristy spot but if I wanted to shoot gritty backstreets I could have stayed in Shanghai.
Nanchang Street has more of the usual fayre you get at inner-city tourist places in China.
A huge pedestrianised area, enough street food to last you a month or more, the bridges and architecture you see on postcards, and more people in one district than are from my home town back in England.
When you’re in the right mood – the tourist mood – it’s great. When you’re in the street photography mood, it’s even better.
And I was in both.
In that moment, loving shooting with the Yashica Yashinon 45mm f1.7, there was no other place I’d rather have been or other thing I’d rather have been doing.
…p.s. if you enjoyed this post on using the Yashica Yashinon 45mm f1.7 in Wuxi, China and think others will too, why not share or pin it?
