Pike Place

Some film photography at Seattle' famous public market.

I took a personal day off work last friday, and went down to Pike Place in the afternoon. Cruise/tourist season is in full swing, and I wanted to capture how active Pike Place can get, even during weekdays.

This is the first film album I’ve posted on this site. These were taken using a Nikon N8008S (F-801) and an AF NIKKOR 50mm f/1.8D on Fuji 400. That film used to be Superia X-Tra, but they either reformulated or rebranded it because that’s what Amazon shipped me instead of Superia. It was cheap so I wasn’t complaining.

400 in real bright daylight was kinda challenging without an ND filter, but I’m glad I went with it because the indoor scenes needed it. Exposure was still all over the place though and I don’t really have a good grasp on it yet. I mostly shot in aperture priority but I think that I should suck it up, shoot in full manual, and learn to use the light meter. That said most of the underexposure was easy enough to clean up in RawTherapee and I’m really happy with how the shots turned out.

One shot that I wasn’t really able to make happen was a shot of people in front of the market sign taking photos. There were a ton of people doing the “pike place selfie” and I really wanted to capture that aspect of the place, because at the end of the day I think that despite how nice of a district it actually is, Pike Place is ultimately a tourist spot. It didn’t materialize though - the 50mm was too short and I couldn’t use a wide enough aperture to get the separation I wanted between the people taking photos and the sign.

Another one that didn’t materialize was one of the workers at the fish market standing around looking vaguely annoyed, surrounded by people ostensibly waiting for them to throw the fish around, but not getting a single order. I couldn’t make it work though, between the crowd and the fact that shortly after I realized what was going on, he walked away.

Oh well. Next time.

P.S. The EXIF data saying that these were taken on a Panasonic G9 are because I used this awesome 3D print to digitize these photos after getting the negatives back.