Portaits of Achi Zaila at Mosa

Gone out for a quick afternoon food trip with my niece, Zaila. We had no intention of taking photos of her but when we reached the location, we found her outfit to be matching the place so I asked her to just follow whatever I say while I take photos of her.

She's my first niece who's already 13 years old, time flies so fast indeed! I remember just carrying her while she was very tiny back then, now, she's already a lady and has been sharing with me how she manages her skin but still gets frustrated that she gets breakouts. I understand how she feels because I was also like that when I was her age, I got a lot of pimples, the biggest I had back then sat right on the tip of my nose, I felt like I was the witch in the Snow White story.

Anyway, my niece just followed me when I say look here, look there, put your hand there, serious face, smile, look at the distance, look at the waiter, look at the ceiling, and everything. She was also very sport about it and it took us maybe ten minutes to tour around the place and were done.

I was using our Fujifilm XT-1 with 7 Artisans 35mm f/1.4, this was a manual lens and I am still not used to the Fuji system, I am a Sony user but my husband didn't bring our Sony camera so I just used whatever we had. I am a believer that the best camera is whatever is in your hand. Char!

So, with a small screen and a manual lens, I have to keep my aperture at around f/2, the most challenging part though of XT-1 was changing the dials for the shutter speed and ISO. It was a sunny day so it was bright outside but dark inside the restaurant so I have to adjust and it was challenging to look into the dial and adjust while with my Sony, I have built this muscle memory and I know which one was already being turned and switched without even looking.

Another issue was the small screen and the focus peaking was not very clear to my eyes, I have bad eyesight now so I was hoping I got my niece's face sharp and focused but I still failed in some other shots when I was post-processing the images. I hope though it isn't that obvious, especially on mobile view.

That's it for today, I will share with you soon what this place was, tune in!