After twenty days photographing the market with the PanaLeica 15mm, I switched to the Lumix 12-35mm. At first, when I started this project, I considered using the same lens the whole time for the sake of consistency, but after 20 days I decided that I wanted to use all my gear to take it out of its slumber and practice different things, so I would let the atmosphere, mood and theme keep the images homogeneous. I would not randomly switch lenses, anyway, and I would instead use them for a reasonable amount of time (10 days at least) to have enough time to synchronize the different focal lengths and characteristics of each lens with the market.
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| Day 21, GX80 + Lumix G X Vario 12-35mm |
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| Day 21b, GX80 + Lumix G X Vario 12-35mm |
After one month visiting the market almost daily, I have already detected some faults in my way of shooting that I have to correct: the most glaring being burst abuse. Whenever a situation was tricky during the first weeks, I used to resort to burst shooting to increase my chances of success, but in the end I became too dependent on it and I felt like I was thinking less and just firing away indiscriminately, which is a very bad idea; on day 23 I got 149 pictures due primarily to burst, and that was the warning sign to stop the practice altogether or at least limit it as much as possible from there onwards.
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| Day 22, GX80 + Lumix G X Vario 12-35mm |
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| Day 22b, GX80 + Lumix G X Vario 12-35mm |
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| Day 22c, GX80 + Lumix G X Vario 12-35mm |
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| Day 22d, GX80 + Lumix G X Vario 12-35mm |
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| Day 22e, GX80 + Lumix G X Vario 12-35mm |
One of the main benefits of coming to the market everyday is that it helps you lose the fear of missing out: since you are regularly practicing and shooting, the chances of getting that interesting, exciting and unexpected capture increase statistically. Granted, photography are not mathematics, but one thing is for sure: if you don't shoot, you won't have any picture at all, and if you shoot regularly, chances are higher to be more successful. This way, the pressure that you feel when you shoot only occasionally and you know you need to get nice captures no matter what is lessened and you can just relax and enjoy the process much more.
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| Day 23, GX80 + Lumix G X Vario 12-35mm |
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| Day 23b, GX80 + Lumix G X Vario 12-35mm |
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| Day 23c, GX80 + Lumix G X Vario 12-35mm |
The more the people who work in the market see me around, the more they open to me, approach me and talk to me. They are increasingly more curious and friendly towards me, they ask me to sit down in their stalls to talk to them whenever they are not busy with customers, they start checking the screen of my camera when I shoot, since I use the screen to compose 95% of the time; this has had a funny consequence, for I only use the EVF when I need a bit of 'privacy' and I want to stay away from the looks of others.
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| Day 24, GX80 + Lumix G X Vario 12-35mm |
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| Day 24b, GX80 + Lumix G X Vario 12-35mm |
The average number of pictures that I took everyday continued growing, probably due to the aforementioned abuse of burst shooting, and the range was between 19 and about 150 pics. Ironically, this increase didn't mean a higher number of good shots, rather at the contrary, for I had more repetitions and slight variations of the same scene rather than different images, and that was the main reason why I decided to limit the use of burst as much as possible, limiting it to only specific scenes where it could really be beneficial.
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| Day 25, GX80 + Lumix G X Vario 12-35mm |
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| Day 25b, GX80 + Lumix G X Vario 12-35mm |
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| Day 25c, GX80 + Lumix G X Vario 12-35mm |
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| Day 25d, GX80 + Lumix G X Vario 12-35mm |
As a way to engage more with the vendors, I started buying things from them (mainly fruits) to get more familiar with them and to pay back the friendliness and acceptance that I was receiving from most of them in all my visits. This short verbal interactions, besides, brought occasional chitchat that let me know them a bit better.
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| Day 26, GX80 + Lumix G X Vario 12-35mm |
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| Day 26b, GX80 + Lumix G X Vario 12-35mm |
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| Day 26c, GX80 + Lumix G X Vario 12-35mm |
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| Day 26d, GX80 + Lumix G X Vario 12-35mm |
As my body of work kept slowly growing, sub-themes started appearing spontaneously and unnoticeably, and this was a very interesting thing to me, because each of my visits was a completely new experience to me and I never considered them as an extension of the last ones but rather as standalone visits, yet some themes became recurring in a very unplanned, organic way, such as sleepers, puddles of light, limbs, mirrors or juxtapositions.
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| Day 27, GX80 + Lumix G X Vario 12-35mm |
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| Day 27b, GX80 + Lumix G X Vario 12-35mm |
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| Day 28, GX80 + Lumix G X Vario 12-35mm |
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| Day 29, GX80 + Lumix G X Vario 12-35mm |
All in all, the most surprising lesson I learned these past 10 visits was that I started feeling guilty the days that I skipped my visit (which were very few, only 2 to be exact) so the project gradually stopped being a choir to become an addiction, a hobby, something I did for the sheer amusement and enjoyment of it rather than for any other reason. Motivation was still rocking high and I was full of ideas and plans that I wanted to try in the coming days.
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| Day 30, GX80 + Lumix G X Vario 12-35mm |
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| Day 30b, GX80 + Lumix G X Vario 12-35mm |
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| Day 30c, GX80 + Lumix G X Vario 12-35mm |
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| Day 30d, GX80 + Lumix G X Vario 12-35mm |
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