Never Let a Good Crisis go to Waste: what Covid-19 taught me about photography
Well, it got me! Two and a half years of teaching at university (that pesky day job) and not one cough, sneeze, or sore throat. However, four days of rock climbing in the Langdale Valley in central Cumbria and wham, hello there virus! You sure took your time. My test came up as pretty much ‘industrial scale’ covid (the dark line appeared very dark and very quickly) and I went on to develop pretty much every conceivable symptom within a couple of weeks. If there was something such as ‘covid bingo’ I’d have done pretty well. Surely this is a thing, right?
At least I got the shivers during a July heatwave here in the UK which sort of helped. I felt rather chilly even though I was running a temperature of almost 40 degrees. It is entirely possible that I also got food poisoning and was suffering from heat exhaustion at the same time (yep, I’d like to reconsider that decision to go rock climbing in stupidly hot weather). Looking back, some of the calls between me and my climbing partner (Nayeli) that day were simply odd.
‘Hey, can you hear me OK?’
‘OK, off belay…’
‘Erm…what?’
She also had Covid as it turned out.
Still, I’m generally pretty philosophical about such things. Covid really did a number on me for a few weeks, and it left me struggling for breath a good while longer while suffering from persistent fatigue and headaches. Very not cool, but as far as I can tell, I survived. No hiking, fell running, or rock climbing for a while afterwards, which wasn’t ideal, but it was pleasing that the small mountains of the Lake District have no real plans to go anywhere anytime soon. Unless you’re a geomorphologist and your understanding of time is pretty lengthy. Yes, as a professional academic I have lots of friends who love to correct me on a technicality. But what to do about the summer holiday I had planned in Austria?
Evening shooting at Donauinsel metro station (Vienna) in mid-September (Fujifilm XF10).
Urban Confinement: not quite the summer I had in mind
Along with my vastly better half we were meant to be heading off to Vienna for the summer weeks, but with Covid still lingering we weren’t sure what to do. She is clearly a biologically superior human though, and shrugged covid off in a matter of days. Despite the fact that Manchester airport was about as fun as Passchendaele in 1917, the British trains were as reliable as a Boris Johnson testimony, and Austrian Airlines were seemingly engaged in a game of ‘quantum leap fight booking’ (flight times being changed all the time) we decided to embrace the chaos and just go. We tested negative before jetting of, off course.
No alpine adventures on the cards, which is often my focus when going to Austria, but navigating the ‘north face of Manchester Airport security’ was just as challenging if I’m honest. The difficulty of breathing left me in a pretty uncomfortable place and the fatigue wasn’t great, but I was determined to get to Vienna given my affection for the city. Of course, I was also keen to do some photography while there and in some ways I enjoyed this far more than I was expecting to. My background is really in mountain and landscape photography and while I have enjoyed street photography before I’ve never had the chance to be confined to an urban setting for a few months. Despite all the fell running and rock climbing I seem to do well with injuries.
Skateboarders are often at the metro stops around Donauinsel in the east of the city. They make for great subjects (Fuji XF10)
So it was that I set my sights on a good few weeks of taking it easy in Vienna and strolling around this wonderful city ordering coffee with my rather poor German (I seem to have a thing for a Verlängerter at Café Ritter), waiting around for the light to do its thing, and for subjects to enter the frame (‘lurking with a camera’ I suppose is one way to describe this). I know Vienna pretty well given that my partner is half-Austrian with family living there, and it is by far my favourite urban setting to shoot in. London, Paris, and Rome have nothing on this place! The old buildings, the light, the people, and character of the place just gets me in a way that is hard to describe.
Fujifilm XF10: viva la photographique libération
When looking at my gear shelf at home, my camera of choice for this was rather obvious: all full-frame gear stayed at home, as did my other cameras (except for my OM-5). My highly pocketable Fuji XF10 came along. Not a popular camera with many reviewers but I love this tiny thing for its size, ease of use, the image quality, the stupidly nice colours, along with the monochrome files it produces. For me, a fixed lens at 28mm (full frame equivalent) is perfect for street work, although a 35mm lens or 40mm would work fine too. I mostly use my XF10 when rock climbing or fell running, but it also makes for a perfect street companion. Anything larger than this tends to get in the way of shooting, if that makes sense…
The camera in question, really no bigger than my mobile phone, but vastly superior image quality…and effortlessly so (Fujifilm X-T3).
While I was expecting to find the experience of a hot summer of street photography to be restrictive (given that I couldn’t get to the Alps and mountain huts) it was precisely the opposite. Heading out each day in shorts, flip flops, a t-shirt, and just a small backpack was wonderfully liberating, relative to the gear I need when heading out into the mountains. Not having to carry extra food, water, layers, a bigger camera, and more rugged shoes felt like a blessing.
The joy of using a small camera like the XF10 cannot be understated. With external controls such as a dedicated exposure compensation wheel, aperture set to the front dial, and ISO set to the focus dial it’s a surprisingly pleasing shooting experience. Touch-to-focus, shutter-speed set to automatic, and simulations set to the function button, there’s little need to dive into the menus. Along with a 24mp APS-C sensor I struggled to understand all the bad review that this camera received. Yes, it doesn’t do all the fancy things bigger, and more expensive cameras do, but it’s a simple question of compromise at the end of the photographic day. A compromise I was happy to make.
A lone cyclist takes refuge from the evening sun at St. Charles’ Church or Karlskirche, just south of the city centre (Fujifilm XF10).
Of course, the absence of a viewfinder might feel odd at first, but the screen is great for composing and I always feel that I’m less threatening to those on the street if I’m holding my camera like a phone. Holding it up to the eye always feels much more aggressive and imposing. At least that’s how I see it. Without a tripod, filters, and the ability to zoom the experience is different to shooting landscapes, mountains, and rock climbers. So why write about this?
I suppose the answer is worth exploring as I just didn’t expect to find so much joy and fun in shooting street photography as much as I did. I have done plenty in the past, but being able to shoot nothing more than an urban environment for the whole summer was an entirely new experience to me. In this sense, this article is really just a discussion with myself to work out why this was the case (I guess). Indeed, after a few days of missing the mountains the unfettered joy of heading out into Vienna with the camera each day really gave a release of freedom and creativity that I just don’t get when out in the mountains. Walking around 30,000 steps a day too, whilst always being close to a café or store was pretty blissful as well.
Don’t get me wrong, I will always regard myself to be a photographer with a central focus on the mountains of the Lake District and the people who enjoy this rugged landscape. But the long, hot, weeks of urban confinement in Austria offered such a release that I was missing, given that Covid kicking my everything into touch, and stopped me getting out into the fells of Cumbria or the Alps of central Europe.
Even in the 2020s, a dash of Fujifilm magic, coupled with the charm of Vienna, creates a pretty pleasing retro vibe (Fujifilm XF10).
Three Useful Lessons
So what did Covid, urban confinement, and the XF10 teach me about cameras and creativity? Quite a bit if I’m honest…
First, it taught me that those of us who see ourselves as landscape or mountain photographers might benefit from carrying less gear. A small but highly capable camera with a fixed lens, like the XF10 or a Ricoh GRIII X, means less options for shooting but a greater degree of freedom. In other words, as nice as it is to drag my full frame Nikon gear around, it is heavy and cumbersome and can get in the way of the photography at times.
If I’m going to shoot something very specific then the XF10 isn’t ideal, of course, but it does a pretty neat job as a running companion and climbing camera. At base, I suppose my point is that street photography was a LOT of fun once it became my central focus, rather than secondary consideration. Landscape and mountain photography is, of course, also a lot of fun. But sometimes it can be a labour of love. I remember the many times I’ve cursed the weight of my backpack when out hiking. The summer months with my tiny Fuji in Vienna served as a reminder that photography should be highly enjoyable (at least for me as a hobbyist photographer).
It was also this experience that pushed me to use my OM-5 much more in the fells of the Lake District given that it offers a pretty amazing blend of size, weight, and image quality. The lenses for this system (8-25mm f/4 PRO, 12-45mm f/4 PRO, and the 40-150mm f/4 PRO) are not cheap, but the quality of the glass is unreasonably impressive.
Dusk light on the Donaukanal in mid-September (OM System OM-5)
Second, my time embracing street photography in Vienna, where I wasn’t rushed for time and couldn’t move that fast anyways, gave me more patience. Waiting for a subject (human or otherwise) is just so important. Finding a nice scene is important, but it often lacks that human element, which offers either scale or interest. By being patient and waiting (or lurking) really does pay off. In a city like Vienna people really don’t notice you given that you largely wash away in a sea of tourists with camera phones. Hence, given time, the good folk of Austria (or tourists) will wander through your frame and really do add sometime to the final image. For images in the mountains this is often a great approach too.
Over the years I have increasingly tried to include people in my landscape and mountain shots for scale and scope of Blencathra, Helvellyn, Great Gable, or Scafell Pike, but I sometimes forget to wait for a subject to lift the scene. Street photography reminded me just how much a few minutes of waiting can transform an image, with the subject really putting the mountains into perspective.
A rather dapper-looking gent strolls through the streets of central Vienna in the early evening (Fujifilm XF10)
Third, and perhaps the most surprising to me was that Covid, by slowing me down, allowed me to be more reflective and present in the moment. As such, I tried different things. In this case, the use of colour. For years, I would always default to black and white images when shooting on the street. Yet slowing down allowed me to think about things like bringing the colour back in. Maybe it was just those famous Fuji colours that look so good in tandem with having more time to think about things, or try something different, but being in no rush meant being able to experiment in ways that I haven’t really allowed myself before now. In turn, I am more comfortable today when it comes to shooting in colour on the streets, and even went back and edited older raw files in colour.
Concluding Thoughts
I’ll never see myself as a street photographer per se. As a fell runner, rock climber, and landscape shooter my heart belongs to the rural, to the mountains, and to the crags of Cumbria’s modest fells. Once I got over the joys of Covid across the winter of 2022-2023 I gradually returned to shooting the modest peaks of the Lake District. Yet I’ll always have a soft spot for street photography in Vienna, and street photography more generally, especially after those tough but beautiful weeks of summer 2022.
Shooting something that isn’t your ‘norm’ is a great exercise and challenges you in ways that you’re simply not used to. I took a lot from a long, hot summer of shooting the urban and feel that I improved elements of my street images that easily cross over into my mountain based-photography. In this sense it felt like Covid, while utterly unwelcome, presented an opportunity to improve my hand at a form of photography that I often see as secondary to my mountain-based work. As a famous chap once said, ‘never let a good crisis go to waste’, I’d like to think that I didn’t.
A young couple making their way down into the quiet metro late on a Saturday evening (Fujifilm XF10)
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