Silhouettes and Light at the National Gallery of Canada
Had a nice date with my wife at the National Gallery of Canada to see the Camera and the City exhibition. What better occasion to bring the Leica M11P + 35mm Summilux to get some shots of this beautiful place.
My favourite shots were the silhouettes, and the quiet moments where you could see the intersection between people and the stunning architecture of the place.
The Leica M is a challenging camera to use as it is almost completely manual. With manual focus, you have to slow down and focus. Because of this, I used zone focusing mostly where I stopped down the camera to at least 5.6-8, with a shutter speed of always above 1/125 (no in-body stabilization on the M). In some cases because it was dead quiet, and I value discretion, I used the electronic shutter a fair bit.
“Above and Below” - this was an opportunistic shot. As I entered this room, I could see the silhouette of the person coming down the stairs above. The lighting was absolutely perfect. I had no time to stop to focus or anything, and my camera was already set to zone focusing, so I just snapped and the picture came out great.
This was also a very quick, opportunistic shot. The guard in the picture was there only momentarily and there were actually many people coming through the space even though this specific shot feels like a quiet, contemplative moment. The camera was set to zone focusing, and was hanging from my neck. I didn’t even pick it up to look through the viewfinder. I just pressed the shutter, and cropped/aligned it afterwards.
