Urban Photography | Fotoeins Fotografie

Posts from the ‘Urban Photography’ category

My Fuji X70: Portra Sunset (XTrans2 recipe)

Above/featured: Morning light in San Francisco’s Financial District. Photo, 29 Mar 2025.

The Fujifilm X70 mirrorless fixed-lens prime camera has added a lot to my approach to photography for projects in both domestic and international settings. To satisfy my curiosity about Fujifilm’s analog-film simulation (film-sim) recipes, I’ve provided examples of X70 images with the following recipes:

• CineStill 800T
• Ektachrome 100SW (saturated warm)
• Fujichrome Slide
• Kodachrome 64
• Kodacolor
• Kodak Color Negative
• Kodak Platinum 200
• Monochrome Red

What follows are images made with the “Portra Sunset” recipe, which Yon Pol describes in their YouTube video.

This recipe is for X-Trans II sensors and the built-in availability of “Classic Chrome”. The settings on my X70 are:

“Classic Chrome” built-in film-sim
Dynamic Range: DR200, but I’ve set this to DR400
Color: +2 (High)
Sharpness: -1 (Medium-Soft)
Highlight: -1 (Medium-Soft)
Shadow: -1 (Medium-Soft)
Noise Reduction: -2 (Low)
White Balance: Daylight; +3 Red, -5 Blue
ISO: Auto, up to 3200

I assigned this recipe for an “all-purpose or daytime” setting as 1 of the 7 camera’s custom presets. The following JPG images are “almost” straight-out-of-the-camera; only minor adjustments to brightness level and a crop to a predefined image size have been applied, with no corrections to colour, contrast, geometric distortion, or rotation.

Just like the Kodachrome 64 recipe, Portra Sunrise uses the Classic Chrome film-sim in-camera setting that produces accentuated reds and an overall orangey-flavour. Blues seem more “subdued”, until foreground objects are illuminated against a clear blue sky. There’s more “diffuse washout” when I point closer to the sun. I imagine I’d get similar results with the Standard Provia film-sim under a clear sky with higher dust- or smoke-content in the atmosphere.

( Click here for images )

My Vienna: space invaders in the capital

Above: WN_31 at the corner of Ballgasse and Rauhensteingasse, 9 July 2024 (P15).

Don’t worry: it’s not 1529, nor is it 1683, and there are no bands of marauders on horseback arriving for a large and lengthy siege. This also does not include anything from outside the Solar System. Instead, this is about a human artist and their little creations sprinkled throughout the Austrian capital city. In fact, I’d claim their “invasion” has already succeeded.

When a wae lad was I, the video game Space Invaders was a kind of dawn, an opening to a brand new world. The lasting effects snuck into many aspects of life, including the time I dedicated to the learning, pursuit, and practice of science. In time, a video game about a battle to ward off waves of little aliens required the purchase of a large bulky black console, accompanied by a large bulky black joystick with a big red button. In the decades since, the technological leap into the first-quarter of the 21st-century means that Space Invaders is available as an online web-application, easily called upon anytime on demand.

In Vienna, the sight of little aliens prompted immediate personal curiosity, and I spent parts of three consecutive summers wandering the streets to find as many possible little “visitors”.

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San Francisco: Sam Wo tradition near the close

(Chinatown)

If a place provides repeatedly good reminders of personal cultural heritage through food, my expectation is one of a long-standing nature to the point of being eternal. But human beings are temporal and ephemeral, and this fact of nature must unfortunately extend to human institutions.

At address 713 Clay (near Kearny), Sam Wo (三和)* is a restaurant in San Francisco, operating as one of the oldest restaurants in the city’s Chinatown. The present owners have retired, their adult children are moving on, and the new ownership has put the future of the restaurant in question. The final day of operations is 27 January 2025, only a handful of days before Chinese New Year. Perhaps it’ll be a pause. And perhaps it’ll be gone.

I’d done my research prior to arrival, only to discover within weeks the restaurant would soon be closed. In the remaining weeks surrounding the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, I promised myself at least one visit to Sam Wo each week until the end: that their excellent “wok6 hei3” (鑊氣) is no hindrance but an encouragement. The quality of their “stir fry essence” means every meal is delicious, with every bite and flavour pointing directly to memories of an upbringing raised by immigrant parents from China’s southern province of Canton and a big chunk of time spent walking and eating within Vancouver’s Chinatown in the 1970s and 80s.

I haven’t been here in the Bay Area very long, but in Sam Wo, I found a place a little like home, where I could also polish my rust in Cantonese (廣東話) and Toisan/Hoisan (台山語). I’ll be sad to see them go, and melt away into the annals of San Francisco’s much-storied Chinatown.

* The full name for Sam Wo is 三和粥粉麵, (read here left to right) whose first 2 characters represent “three harmonies” for congee (粥), broad flat rice noodles (粉), and thin egg noodles (麵). Historically, Chinese was written right to left.

The place, the food …

2025 postscript: there are new owners, and the new re-opening is Friday, September 5.

Rathauspark, Rathaus, WienLiebe, Stadt Wien, Vienna, Wien, Österreich, Austria, fotoeins.com

24 for 24: Foto(ein)s in 2024

Above/featured: “Hashtag Wienliebe” (Vienna love), Rathauspark. Photo, 15 Jul 2024 (P15).

2024 has been an interesting year of personal challenge and discovery. A conclusion for the family house provided fresh impetus to inhabit (in the short term) new spaces and places to improve overall health and happiness. In Vienna, I spent a full month for the third consecutive summer. Yes, it was continent hot, but time in the Austrian capital was both glorious and productive as expected. In Calgary is a city I hadn’t visited in many decades, and I witnessed a very happy aunt surrounded by many family members on her centenary year. In California’s Bay Area is a place where I hadn’t set foot in over ten years, but whose daily temperatures and chances of consistent sun offer a higher level of content.

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Calgary: it’s only 50 years

It’s been a while

The last time I saw my aunt J in person was in Vancouver for Dad’s funeral ten years ago. The last time I set foot inside aunt J’s home in Calgary was in 1976, which by now is a mere hop for a 50-year anniversary.

My mum’s big sister is celebrating her 100th birthday this month, and many members of the extended family from across North America are gathering in Alberta’s most populous city for a momentous celebration.

My photographic traces of a late-summer morning and afternoon wandering the city centre is on display, “outlined” by various pieces of art and architecture.