There is an area just outside the city of Lisburn, Northern Ireland that seems to cultivate musical talent. Millbank studios on the ‘Maze’ side of the city is the home studio of the likes of Mojo Fury, Rams’ Pocket Radio and Run Away Go (if you haven’t heard of them then you really need to Google).
It was a cold morning in late December and I was tasked to capture the cover image for one of Gary Lightbody’s favourite folk pop artists, Stephen Scullion aka ‘Malojian’.
There was lots of freedom in the concept design but I knew I wanted to create an image that would give the viewer something not only to look at but also to study.
Millbank studios is like a throw back to the recording studios of the 1960s and 70s, old pianos quietly rot from writing sessions the previous summer it is impossible to visit the studio and not be creative, it was easy to build the concept from the location. I took my X100T on a visit to the studios late in 2014.
For the shoot we decided to try and encapsulate a slightly enchanted, musically retrospective feel and use whatever we could find to enrich the photo. We used the album’s producer Mr Michael Mormecha as the key subject and built the image around the one man band iconography.
From the name of the album subtly hidden in the image to rope ladders and flecks of snow on the ground the aim was to go back to the album covers of the 70s and 80s that were read and studied while the audience listing to the songs.
For the shoot I packed the X100T that I planned to use for capturing the main cover and I also packed the X-T1 and stunning Fujinon 56mm lens to capture some additional portraits to be used to promote the album on release.
X-T1 with XF56mmF1.2 @ 1/2500th f/2.2 ISO400
I waited for the sun to move over the Millbank garden so I had a workable level of shadow. As the photographer I was also initially (physically) casting a shadow on the scene so the idea was to use the X100T’s wifi option to control the camera remotely via my phone.
Within 5 minutes of experimenting with a number of compositions and the re-arrangement of the various content within the frame I had captured three images that would work as the cover. The images were shot wide enough so they would work as a wrap-around cover (which will be particularly interesting for the full vinyl release).
Lightroom
I was able to pre-visualise the final feel for the image and knew the feel I wanted to create in Lightroom. It took around an hour to process the first image from which I created a Lightroom preset from the rest of the shoot. I was then able to sync the images accordingly.
Tell us about yourself and what got you into photography? How did you develop your style in photography?
I’m an exiled Welshman living in North Wiltshire where I live with my lovely wife, two lovely children, not so lovely naughty whippet. I shoot social documentary photography, mostly weddings, and I shoot in a candid manor which means I don’t stage or set up any of the photographs.
My photography journey has been quite quick and up until 2008/9 I was running my own online marketing business in London. A change in circumstance saw us “move to the country” where we settled down and I decided a complete change of career was needed. I decided to become a wedding photographer.
In a not very short period of time I understood that my ideal day shooting a wedding was in a totally candid way. And as such, that is how my style has evolved and I now shoot documentary weddings all over the UK, Europe and even America. I love the humanity element of weddings and I simply shoot people, being people.
Why did you choose Fujifilm cameras?
In short, I was very happy with my old DSLR system but I always felt there was something missing. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on until I picked up an X100 in 2011. I knew instantly that this was the future for me (though it would take a couple more camera models before I made the switch entirely).
Using the smaller CSC cameras simply allows me to get more intimate images, without affecting the integrity of the moment.
I’m not a “spray and pray” type photographer. Most of my images are considered moments, rather than running around shooting thousands of images and hoping for the best, the X-Series with their glorious viewfinders and beautifully designed chasis allow me to watch, then shoot.
I believe a good documentary photographer should be a better observer, than shooter. The X-Series are so much lighter and they allow me to get into moments and shoot weddings from the inside out, rather than the outside in as was the case and only option with my big DSLR system.
I sold all my DSLR gear and bought a new car. With the change I invested in my X-Series and have never looked back.
Do you have a photographic philosophy you live by?
I like to look for the extraordinary, in a world of ordinariness. I see wedding photography just like street photography. A good street photograph has a story and has a reason to exist. I want all my images to involve emotion, story and ultimately some kind of humanity element. I don’t want my pictures to be simply boring snapshots wherever possible and so my philosophy is to shoot images that make me smile, and make the client smile too.
Key inspirations – What & who inspires you?
I was never “into” photography, but I remember seeing the images of Jane Bown, Don McCullin etc in the Sunday supplements as I grew up. I didn’t have an appreciation of the technique of photography then but I certainly loved looking at the photographs.
In more recent times, from a wedding and street photography point of view I’m in awe of the work and philosophy of Mel Digiacomo.
Do you have any tips or tricks you could share with us?
From a technical point of view I’d like to say things like; consider the background, check the composition of your images, ensure the light is good.
All these things are important but my most important tip I think is this: try not to take boring photos. Whether you are shooting on the streets, shooting weddings or shooting your kids at home – always try and give the image a reason to exist. A snapshot of someone sat in a café having a drink has a lot less impact than if perhaps something else is happening in the background, or there is a juxtaposition in the image.
I find setting my cameras up to use back button focusing and zone focusing for low light works amazingly well. If I’m shooting quickly, I will often use aperture priority or even “P” mode. Remember I’m the observer and the camera is the technology! Explore the glorious JPEGs that the X-Series produce too. I think if you ignore these, you are missing out on such an exciting part of photography – having the results out of the can without having to process them? Imagine that…..
What’s next for you?
I’m shooting more and more overseas weddings and I’ll be exploring that a bit more. My workshops and speaking see me travel too which is great but one thing I want to explore more is social documentary. I want to capture life in all its aspects and I’ll be perusing that more over the coming years.
This colourful effect is known as cross polarisation and the good news is, it’s incredibly easy to do. In the days of film, this technique would have regularly required sheets of polarising film placed behind the subject and a polarising filter on the camera. Now, all you need is a polarising filter, a computer screen and a plastic geometry set. Here’s how it’s done:
1 As mentioned, the pre-requisite parts are a geometry set (we pushed the Fujifilm budget to the limit spending £1.59 on this one), a polarising filter and a computer screen. It isn’t essential that the filter is the correct size for the lens you’re using – just as long as it covers the front element. I used the super-sharp XF60mm macro for these image, but didn’t have a 39mm filter, so I just used a 72mm one instead.
2 All these shots were taken with the X-T1, which I set to aperture-priority, ISO 200 and spot metering. The camera was tripod mounted and positioned directly in front of the screen.
3 The computer background needs to be white. As I was using an Apple Mac, I did this through the System Preferences window. With the background white, I positioned the pieces from the geometry set directly on the computer screen in the order I wanted them.
4 Here’s the magic bit! Put the polarising filter in front of the lens and slowly rotate it, as you do, you’ll see the screen turn grey, then black. As this happens, the vibrant colours in the plastic will appear. Make sure you spot meter from the plastic, not the black background and you’ll get a result like this.
5 Once you’ve perfected the technique, you can start getting creative. Here are a couple of extra shots of individual pieces from the set where I cropped in in post-production.
Quick tips
There is a ‘sweet spot’ when you’re turning the polarising filter, make sure you experiment so you get a pure black background, otherwise you’ll end up with a less-appealing grey as you see here.
Use the Velvia Film Simulation mode for really vibrant colours.
On some screens, when you find the optimum position for the polarising filter, small white dots will appear in the background. These may disappear when you spot meter accurately, but if they don’t you can get rid of them by boost the blacks in post production.
We’d advise you to buy a new geometry set rather than using an old one, which will almost certainly be covered in scratches and will dilute the effect. Besides, everyone needs a protractor, right?
Pygmy elephants are endemic to the island of Borneo, famous for their slightly smaller size, they are endangered with a population of roughly 1,500 left in the wild. This species is increasingly vulnerable to human impacts as a result of deforestation and conflict with palm oil development. They are the least understood elephant and in my opinion the sweetest, with their oversized ears and long tail to keep them cool and usher away insects.
Our first encounter was through an opening where there were about twenty elephants grazing. Our presence obviously wasn’t too big a concern as we were still observing different behaviour which is only seen in relaxed environments, such as play fighting and suckling.
Taken with the XF50-140mm.
We moved on in our boat and headed around to a more suitable location and the view that greeted us was unbelievable!
Taken with the XF16mm.
I didn’t think the XF16mm would get much work but I was wrong. Having that mounted on one X-T1 and the XF50-140mm on another, sometimes switching to the XF16-55mm too, made for a brilliant set up.
One set up that proved to really work was the XF10-24mm and the X-T1 on a monopod fired via wireless triggers. Using the electronic shutter mode meant that I could have the camera really close to the elephants with no sound being produced so they stayed nice and calm. I couldn’t have done this with an SLR or in mechanical shutter mode. Using that set up on a monopod meant that I could shoot from a really low (or high) angle and still stay on my feet incase I needed to move. The tilting screen meant that I could see exactly what was in the frame and I used continuous auto focus as I trusted it to keep the focus on the subject. the wide perspective really worked well with these large animals, they may be called pygmy elephants but the adults still stand 2.5 meters tall! The other advantage of this lens was the OIS which worked fantastically. Considering I was holding the camera on the end of a 1.5 meter poll, in a busy environment and still getting sharp photos at 1/60sec is a testament to the OIS.
The lower perspective offered by this set up helped to place the elephants in their environment.
However when the conditions were particularly gloomy and I didn’t want to push the camera past ISO3200 (ISO6400 is fine but on this occasion I decided not to) I switched to the ever-present XF16mm and utilised the F1.4 aperture. Though the angle of view was much narrower the benefit of the faster shutter speed was huge. This was particularly important as when the sun was shinning it would often create very strong dappled light which would often result in blown highlights. As a result the best results were usually from overcast conditions as it meant that everything was correctly exposed, but this meant there was less light available.
A mother and baby share a quite moment.
An elephant checks out my remote set up. XF16mm.
XF16mm at F4.
Walking along an elephant pathway through the undergrowth. XF16mm at F4.
To get some close ups I used the ever-present XF50-140mm utilising the wonderful sharpness at F2.8.
F2.8
F2.8 – This lens is so sharp wide open.
This was a truly incredible experience, one that I will never forget and I am so pleased that the X-Series produced photos to do the interactions justice. From the XF50-140mm to the XF10-24mm, the Fujinon lenses were exceptional across the range. We were even lucky enough to see the elephants beside a river just as the evening light reached its vivid climax.
The XF16mm being utilised again at F5.6.
I hope you have enjoyed this series of photos, let me know your thoughts. The X-Series is developing into a great, lightweight wildlife system, I can’t wait for the forecasted XF100-400mm to complete this fantastic system!
I have been lucky enough to be using a prototype of the XF16mm F1.4 since March and I have to say it is brilliant. I wasn’t entirely sure what I’d end up using it for, but as it turns out it is an extremely flexible lens and helped to produce some shots that would otherwise have not been possible.
This particular story has a bit of an unusual beginning. The location is the Kinabatangan River, Sabah, Malaysia, I was in this region with another photographer, Christian Loader from Scubazoo who I’m currently doing some work with. I have to thank Christian for some of the photos of me here. One morning, we headed up river briefly as our guide Osmon wanted to show us something he had spotted the previous night. We slowed underneath some low lying branches. Before I knew what had happened we had come across a relatively young python and… it fell in the boat! At which point I almost jumped out, much to the amusement of the other two who have handled snakes extensively before. The snake then decided to snuggle up to my Millican Dave camera bag! They calmly caught it and we relocated it inside the forest on a nice tree branch, in return it kindly sat still allowing us to take some pictures.
The close focusing capabilities of this lens really impressed me and allowed me to get some really close wide-angle shots, allowing me to fill the frame with the python and to also capture the environment.
I used the X-T1 with the XF16mm F1.4 attached as well as a Nissin i40 flash I used a rogue flash bender. But because this would involve getting very close to the snake I decided to put the camera on a monopod and used a wireless trigger set up to keep me working at a safe distance. To stress, the snake was absolutely fine and did not once try and strike the set up. The angled screen on the X-T1 was very helpful here as it meant that I could see exactly what was in the frame, regardless of slight angle changes to composition.
Here is the set up. Please excuse the ‘jungle hat’!
Because I was using the i40 flash in TTL mode, I couldn’t shoot above 1/180sec so I had to stop down to F8 for much of the photos. The location was very dark and flat as the vast majority of the tropical sunlight is absorbed by the canopy above. Thankfully the XF16mm seems to have very quick and accurate autofocus, even in these less than ideal conditions.
In an up and coming blog I’ll show the benefit of the F1.4 aperture when photographing Pygmy Elephants.
This February I was once again in Yellowstone National Park running MagicIs photographic workshops with some really extraordinary people. Over the two weeks I learned a little about nuclear physics, banking, metallurgy, reconstructive surgery, hitech roof construction, information technology, farming and how a 12 year old boy sees the world through a camera…
In return I showed them some of the most extraordinary sights on earth and endeavoured to give them some of the skills to translate what they saw before them into images – be they wildlife, landscape, or something more abstract.
At the beginning of each course there was much talk of aperture, shutter speed, ISO and autofocus modes – the core building blocks behind understanding how your camera works. Then came the understanding of how the technology in your camera sees the world and makes judgement on the camera’s settings – I like to think of this as “The Small Man from Japan” who lives inside our cameras and tries to guess what it is we are photographing and how it should be exposed.
Then gradually as a group we talked more about composition and in particular about understanding how we, as cognitive human beings, see the world around us. We have our familiar tools of depth, time, framing and tone, but before we can use these we have to learn to “see”.
“Homage to the Small Man from Japan” – Fujifilm X-T1 – XF14mm – 1/15s at f/22 ISO200 with vertical panning
Every time we pick up a camera and look through the viewfinder we create an abstract – by framing our subject and capturing it in an intrinsically two dimensional device we move away from external reality and instead seek to achieve its effect using shapes, colours and textures. Some of these abstractions can be literal and immediately recognisable for what they are, others are more ephemeral and create an impression or a feeling of what is before us that may or may not be understood by the viewer.
But there is a huge difference between “looking” and “seeing”.
When we “look” at something we think that we are taking it all in at one instant. In fact our eyes and brains form a complex image by scanning and storing small parts at a time and assembling them into a whole. Some parts of this are borrowed from memory and used as a stopgap until that part of the image can be scanned. I am sure many of you will have experienced that feeling, when glimpsing at a wristwatch, that the second hand takes a few moments before it appears to move regularly – this is simply our brain applying the known static image of our watch, processing everything around it and then realising that something within the watch is moving and giving that some focus and detail. The phenomenon is called Chronostasis and gives us a fascinating glimpse into the way our visual perception actually works.
When we learn to “see” we bring many factors into play. We can pre-visualise the way we want to represent a subject in terms of depth or time. By understanding how the brain interprets shapes and forms we can compose our framing to help the mind’s journey through the photograph. If we can reduce and simplify the image to tell a clearer story then we can strengthen the viewer’s emotional connection with the subject matter.
Seeing involves thought and time and is part of a process we call mindfulness – “the intentional, accepting and non-judgemental focus of one’s attention on the emotions, thoughts and sensations occurring in the present moment”. It comes from the Buddhist meditational practice anapanasati and is widely used in the treatment of obsessive compulsive disorders, anxiety and drug addiction. And mindfulness is a key building block in creative photography.
Let me show you an example using bison… There are many thousands of bison in Yellowstone and they are rather wonderful animals to photograph. No two are the same and as the weather conditions change they take on many different appearances. For some time now I have been seeking a very specific image of a bison – one that tells as much about the animal’s habitat as it does about the animal itself, showing both the harsh environment and the creature’s strength.
By thinking about this conceptual image I now find that I see and photograph bison in a completely different way, using the camera’s tools to create abstractions that try to convey something more about the essence of bison…
This image is as much about snow as it is bison – the falling snow (rendered pin sharp by the high shutter speed) is the subject in focus, shallow depth of field and a panoramic crop gives a sense of distance to these slow lumbering beasts.
Here the focus is on the speed and power of the bison ploughing through deep snow. The relatively slow shutter speed allows representation of movement through blur while the horizontal panning keeps just enough sharpness in the bison to show its purpose.
However neither image is the one I carry in my mind – the single image that combines everything that is “bison”. Most likely I will never make this “perfect” image, but I will certainly keep looking for it and finding new ways to see this magnificent creature and its frozen habitat.
“New Life from Old” – Fujifilm X-T1 – XF18-135 @ 135mm – 1/40s at f/11 ISO200
Abstraction and mindfulness together open the photographer’s eyes and allow us to see both the tiny detail and the wider environment – the microcosm and the macrocosm. We become more aware of our surroundings and more attuned to our environment, and in doing so our images begin to connect with the viewer and tell a story – every photograph should tell a story…
For more information about MagicIs photographic workshops and safaris visit www.magicis.com
If you are interested in finding out more about the 2016 winter workshops in Yellowstone National Park then contact me via the MagicIs website at http://magicis.com/contact-us/
About Simon
Fujifilm X-Photographer Simon Weir specialises in photographing live performance (particularly classical music), contextual portraiture and nature. To see more of his work, check out his website http://www.simonweir.com/
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