Right before the new wedding season begins, I came to New York City to visit my friend Wenyan on a sunny day last weekend. I've known Wenyan for quite some time, but we seldom spoke to each other before. She is cold in most people's eyes, yet beautiful and delicate. There was nothing else in the world that could surprise me so much when I was told she kept following my photography works for a long time. She even could point out some of my images that I almost forgot. As the name indicates, Dream Catcher Project was supposed to explore the beauty and humanity within our bodies, and Wenyan is a real gem seating in the top of my shooting list. In my mind, she is more like a goddess from ancient civilizations, really moody and subtle. To shoot her, I have to say, is far from ease. She liked to free her will at times, and acted in her own ways without any signs. Under this kind of circumstance, I had no way but let her decide everything including the shooting locations.
She was smart. When we entered the grand Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, I immediately realized the phenomenal interplay of the light and textures there. It's just amazing! But wait a minute, it's not a legal photographic location, especially for environmental portraiture. As expected, Wenyan and I were warned and stopped a couple of times when we tried to shoot "artistically", and when I lay on the ground in the middle of the passage, or tried to step on the statue to shoot downward, I knew I might be kicked out of the door by the security guards in the next second. Thanks to the rapid shutter of my new beloved D3s, we can pose and shot quickly, right before we got into any big troubles. This is such exciting shooting experience for me ever since the project starts, and truly I loved how those ideas came out and carried out in a few seconds.
For those of you following my photography works for some time, you might notice the abrupt change of my style here. Actually this is my first official session that was shot purely by my new gear - Nikon D3s coupled with my favorite Nikkor 70-200 f/2.8G VRII, as well as Nikkor 24-70 f/2.8G. After being a long-time Canon shooter, my switch to Nikon was finalized in the last couple of days after a thorough consideration. The most amazing characteristic of Nikon D3s that impressed me a lot in this session is its outstanding high ISO performance. We were shooting in a museum full of frequent weak and complex lighting conditions, and of course no flash would be allowed. With D3s, I can confidently increase my ISO up to 12800 to shoot! Yes, I didn't make the typos, I shot with ISO 12800 for a bunch of images released below. That's just incredible, insane, crazy, blah blah blah... I could never imagine to do this on my 5D and 5D Mark II. The noise here is far less annoying than the ones produced by Canon 5D series and the images shot at ISO 6400 looked just like the ones shot at ISO 640 with my 5D Mark II, if they were exposed correctly! I really loved how dramaically Nikon D3s affected my shooting capability and creativity, and will be more confident and happier to use it in my future photography works.
My new photography era has begun, and please enjoy this 1st episode. My name is Qing, and I am so proud to be a Nikon shooter from now on! Enjoy ~~~
