I knew the low light wasn't the best on the Sony A6000. It's an old camera now and pushing it above 400 ISO tends to really introduce some noise. For this reason I try to avoid pushing it above, or avoid just shooting in low light entirely. During daylight the camera still performs like a beast, there's nothing wrong with it there. The shots under the right conditions can look just as good as the newer lineups, with more of that quality coming from the lenses themselves more than anything else. Still, with the arrival of a strong storm after weeks of really brutal heat, I wanted to capture some of the atmosphere that was rolling in. The intensity of the low hanging clouds, their strong darkness, and the way it interacted with the space.
I first noticed a strong haze appearing, large amounts of dust from the surrounding environment. This area is like that. It's dry, and not far from the border of Iran. Where the south of Armenia has its own desert landscape. it rolls on in depending where you are, and sometimes strong gusts of wind picks it up and throws it around the old abandoned factory spaces. Up against the taller new builds. No real way to escape that, and it's best to keep the windows closed. Since I wanted to capture some shots, I had them open, and I could feel the dust being thrown into my eyes with each gust, even despite being several floors high in the building.
To try to mix things up and test, I switched between two different lenses for these, with different filters. The first lens being the 35mm, it was alright but still felt a bit tight for some shots, part of why I have been mentioning lately that I am looking at much wider focal lengths to get. I had a black mist filter on it which softens light, and you can really see that in the second picture. It's quite a fun feature of the filter. With the mountains in the distance, the low clouds and some parts of the clear sunset visible. It didn't take long for the rain to begin, to which that pretty much halted the shoot as the strong rain kept coming inside and landing on the front element of the lenses.
For the first image I used my 85mm lens, I liked the composition that showed a construction worker in a shack hiding from the strong rain, the composition was beautiful but the outcome wasn't all that great. It reminded me of a film I loved watching a few years ago, to which I instantly felt like watching it again and will do so after this: The Looming Storm. A film drenched in the damp. Constant rain and industrial zones. All this did was cement that realisation that I need to make a few upgrades. A new camera, and that new wider focal length lens. But which one first? That's the next question!