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FULL TEST

PANASONIC LUMIX GH5 II The much loved hybrid gets a timely upgrade

STARTING OUT

BREAKING INTO THE BUSINESS Tips from the top to help you turn pro

GO LIVE

ARE YOU SET TO STREAM? You’ve got the tools, so grab the business

Colouring a

Classic

Terry O’Neill’s iconic Bardot shot gets a modern day makeover

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EDITOR’S CHOICE | ISSUE 185

Welcome WE’VE GOT ANOTHER full-on extended digital issue lined up for you this month, packed to the gills with unmissable content. Our big news this month is the launch of our exciting new Pro Academy series, in tandem with the Nikon School, and it’s a chance for those entering the business and seasoned pros alike to flex their creative muscles in some fresh disciplines. Take a look and consider signing up to what I’m sure will be a popular section of the magazine. Elsewhere, our software specialist AmyLeigh Atkins is talking to ten pros who are each explaining how they arrived at their own particular ‘look’ in their work, while Gillian Devine is extolling the virtues of brand photography and explaining how to get involved.

on live streaming, which is rapidly becoming an area where forwardthinking photographers can look to make an impression. You might already have much of the gear, so see what our photographer case studies have to say!

PRO

UR SPECTACULAR PROFESSIONAL Photographer of the Year Competition just keeps on giving, with Richard Adams becoming our latest spot prize winner. Richard picks up the awesome Zhiyun Crane 2S gimbal, worth a cool £649, for his wonderful shot

just that, and to sample our brand-new Pro Academy, which we’re running in tandem with the excellent Nikon School. Over the next six months, we’ll be setting Professional Photo readers six challenges to see what you can do, and you’re cordially invited to enter just one or to go the whole hog and take part in all six. We’re inviting you to send across your best shot from the assignment to our expert team at Professional Photo and, if you’ve met the required standard, we’ll send you back an e-certificate to prove the fact. Successfully complete all six assignments and you’ll receive a further e-certificate to confirm that you really are an excellent all-round operator! It’s not a competition and there are no prizes to be won, but you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that your skills have been recognised and it’s a chance to test yourself by tackling some fresh genres.

of a rare harvest mouse, caught in the middle of a downpour. Take part in the biggest photographic competition Professional Photo has ever run and be in with a chance of winning one of our ten categories, with the person who ultimately picks up the overall title of

Professional Photographer of the Year also walking away with the fabulous Panasonic S1R plus 24-105mm f/4 Macro OIS kit. To spice things up, we’re also offering a selection of amazing monthly spot prizes along the way, which is why, like Richard, it pays to get your entries in now!

THE

PRO ACADEMY OF PHOTOGRAPHY SKILLS IN ASSOCIATION WITH

HOW TO ENTER

ASSIGNMENT ONE:

FOOD PHOTOGRAPHY

All entries need to be made online through the Professional Photo website and you’ll be able to enter as many categories as you like, but we’re asking for single images only, and you’ll only be able to upload one image to one particular category each month, so a total of ten images a month across all the categories.

This is to certify that

SKILLS

AWARD

Your Name Here

has reached the standard required to pass the Pro Academy: Food Photography assignment set by Professional Photo and the Nikon School, https://nikonschool.co.uk

Overall closing date is August 31, 2021. Full details of all the prizes plus terms and conditions can be found online.

Terry Hope

Terry Hope Editor, Professional Photo

THIS MONTH’S PRIZE How to Take Part You don’t need to be a professional photographer or a Nikon user to take part in Pro Academy, and don’t feel shy about sending in the best shot you've been able to achieve, even if it’s perhaps not up to the high standards of the work from Donna that you can see here. It’s all about learning and rest assured we will be making allowances for newbies! Head to the Professional Photo

60 | PROFESSIONAL PHOTO ISSUE 185

THE FABULOUS ZHIYUN Crane 2S, worth £649, is a professional and highly intuitive gimbal for use by photographers and videographers, with a powerful 3-axis stabiliser system, which is designed for larger mirrorless and DSLR cameras. It features a 12-hour battery life for all-day operation and a lightweight carbon handle, which comes with multiple mounting points for use with monitors, mics and additional lighting. There’s also a quick release plate that allows the camera to be quickly and easily transferred to a slider or a tripod when required. Control is through a 0.96in OLED screen, enabling the user to go through the entire menu and to switch between modes in an instant. ❚ zhiyun-tech.com

SCAN TO ENTER

▸

website – or click through on our QR Code – and upload your shot for Assignment One – Food Photography and make sure you fill in your email details. Our team will assess your shot and, if you’ve met the required standard, an e-certificate will be on its way to you.

›

PROFESSIONALPHOTO.ONLINE

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ISSUE 185 PROFESSIONAL PHOTO | 61

Contributing Editor: Matty Graham matty@professionalphoto.online Contributing Editor: Richard Bradbury richard@professionalphoto.online

PROFESSIONALPHOTO.ONLINE

You’ve got the tools, so grab the business

Colouring a

Classic

Terry O’Neill’s iconic Bardot shot gets a modern day makeover

GET THE LOOK HOW TO ARRIVE AT A STYLE THAT DEFINES YOUR WORK

ON THE COVER Our intriguing cover image features Brigitte Bardot, photographed by the legendary Terry O’Neill. Find out the full story of how the Iconic Images agency coloured this classic shot in our Talking Heads feature overleaf.

8 | PROFESSIONAL PHOTO ISSUE 185

Page 8

PANASONIC LUMIX GH5 II | TESTED

SPOT PRIZE WINNER: Richard Adams – Wildlife Category Harvest Mouse in the Rain I’M INVOLVED IN a harvest mouse breed-and-release project, with the purpose of reintroducing the species after a drastic loss over the years due to farming methods. I was given a tip off where a nest had been found, so an early morning was on the cards, as it was four hours’ drive away. I settled into position and preframed my shot and waited. That day, we seemed to get hit with all weathers and, as I was about to give up, thinking it was an old nest, I saw a slight movement out of the corner of my eye. They had moved their nest! I slowly panned my camera across, knowing any sudden movement would spook these little guys. I then spotted one sleeping on a branch, and couldn’t believe my good fortune. I took a few shots, just in time for the heavens to open up again and soak the two of us. I came away a tired but happy photographer that evening. Nikon D500, Sigma 105mm, 1/160sec at f/10, ISO 160

VIDEO Click here to see a film of the Zhiyun Crane 2S Gimbal in action!

Competition Portal: professionalphoto.online/ppoty PROFESSIONALPHOTO.ONLINE

The on-board contrast detection AF of the GH5 II is better than ever but still not as good as rivals.

The hugely respected Panasonic Lumix GH5 has had a makeover, and the Mark II version takes its predecessor’s features up a significant notch and adds live streaming into the mix. WORDS & IMAGES ADAM DUCKWORTH

F YOU’RE A PROFESSIONAL imagemaker who happens to be using one of Panasonic’s range of MFT cameras, the chances are you’re much more biased towards shooting video than high-quality stills. That’s not, of course, to suggest the GH range is lacking on the stills front, rather that the line-up has always offered spectacular movie spec, something that was planned in from the word go by the forward-thinking Panasonic design team. The original Lumix GH5 was unveiled four years ago as the first mirrorless camera to shoot 4K/60p slow-motion, for example. You could also record this in super high-quality 10-bit 4:2:2 if you used an external recorder, plus you could

shoot in 180fps for super slow-motion in HD. And if you paid around £79 more, you could upload V-Log L gamma to enable maximum dynamic range. Since then, full-frame mirrorless has pretty much become the norm, as has clever hybrid AF using a mix of contrastdetection and on-sensor phase detection, plus the ability to record video Raw files. The GH5 doesn’t offer any of this, and neither does the new, upgraded GH5 II. For that, you need to move up to Panasonic’s full-frame mirrorless cameras, such as the S5, although none of the Lumix range has yet to offer anything other than Panasonic’s contrast-detection AF which, simply put, is now rated as pretty good in its latest iteration. There are the usual,

66 | PROFESSIONAL PHOTO ISSUE 185

modern options, such as face detection, and it’s certainly faster than ever, but it still isn’t as accurate or as quick as rivals, certainly for fast-moving subjects or video capture. Many filmmakers rely on manual focus, so perhaps this is another reason it makes sense for the GH range to be targeted towards the motion market. What the Mark II version of the GH5 does offer is the same 20.3MP sensor but with a new anti-reflective coating to control flare, and Panasonic claims it comes with around a third more dynamic range. It’s in an almost identical body to the GH5, apart from a few red dials and buttons, but it’s fitted with a faster processor, which allows the camera to benefit from many of the firmware upgrades that other Panasonics

PROFESSIONALPHOTO.ONLINE

have had in recent times. This means the GH5 II gets the latest, much faster and more accurate autofocus, V-Log L already installed, a bigger battery, a USB-C socket for charging, new menus and an increase in higher-quality video recording options. It now records the wider DCI 4K or standard UHD 4K video in 10-bit 4:2:0 at up to 60p internally to memory cards with no crop and no time limits on recording. It will simultaneously output the same signal in 4:2:2 10-bit to an external recorder for even higher quality. If you drop the GH5 II’s frame The new camera features a body that is virtually identical to the original GH5 but comes with several improvements.

PROFESSIONALPHOTO.ONLINE

rate to 30p or less, then it records DCI or UHD 4K video in 10-bit 4:2:2. There are also several new anamorphic de-squeeze options built in, which is ideal for use with the more affordable anamorphic lenses

that have been hitting the market recently for crop-sensor cameras. While many swear that full-frame is the only way to go, based on the fact that the MFT sensor is only a quarter of the size, the camera is still capable of producing highquality stills and video footage, especially when there’s plenty of light around. One area where you will notice a difference is the extra depth of field you’ll achieve over a full-frame camera, but faster lenses can go some way to equalising this. For stills, it’s easy to blow up the images on screen and to see first-hand that the resolving power of a 20MP MFT sensor is, unsurprisingly, not going to match that of a 61MP full-frame ›

ISSUE 185 PROFESSIONAL PHOTO | 67

Page 80

SUBSCRIPTION AND BACK ISSUES Email: subs@professionalphoto.online Online: https://professionalphoto.online/ magazine-subscription

EDITORIAL Publisher and Editor: Terry Hope terry@professionalphoto.online

GO LIVE

ARE YOU SET TO STREAM?

Panasonic Lumix GH5 II

HOW IT WORKS

STARTING OUT

Tips from the top to help you turn pro

TESTED

The competition is open until August 31, 2021, there’s no fee to enter and everyone is welcome to take part. We’ve teamed up with our friends at The Societies to tie in each of our ten categories to one of the Societies that operates under their umbrella. Along the way, we’ll be awarding exciting and valuable spot prizes to highlight the best of the entries. In September, we’ll be choosing a winner for each of the ten categories, who will receive not just the section prize but also a 12-month Professional Level Membership of the SWPP and a copy of Affinity Photo and the Affinity Photo Workbook, courtesy of Serif. Each of the ten winners will then be in with a chance of being judged our first-ever Professional Photographer of the year, and picking up that fabulous Panasonic S1R kit.

In Association with

Hearty congrats to Richard Adams, who has become our latest spot prize winner, scooping the amazing Zhiyun 2S Crane Gimbal with his outstanding shot of a very wet harvest mouse.

ASSIGNMENT ONE:

The much loved hybrid gets a timely upgrade

TERRY HOPE EDITOR

Get Your Entry in for PPOTY!

Welcome to Pro Academy in association with the Nikon School. We’re offering you the chance to show off your skills in a number of genres and to earn our certificate of excellence.

FULL TEST

PANASONIC LUMIX GH5 II

As always, we’re bursting at the seams with stories so please dive in and look around and I hope you enjoy the read!

SPOT PRIZE WINNER!

Show Us Your Skills!

ON-PAGE VIDEO ISSUE 185 £3.99

PROFESSIONALPHOTO.ONLINE

Our Time To Turn Pro section offers you an introduction to putting together a killer business plan, something that will be essential should you ever be looking for a loan or to attract investment, while our reviews this month focus on the upgraded Panasonic Lumix GH5 II and BenQ’s fabulous new hybrid monitor.

PRO ACADEMY

Time to

ONLY £3.99 +EXTRA CONTENT

BREAKING INTO THE BUSINESS

On the subject of potential new lines of business, don’t miss our feature

TURN

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Professional Photo is published 12 times a year by So Smart Media, West Cottage, Brasted Place, Brasted, Kent TN16 1JE. No part of this magazine can be used without prior written permission of So Smart Media Ltd. Professional Photo is a registered trademark of So Smart Media Ltd. The advertisements published in Professional Photo that have been written, designed or produced by employees of So Smart Media Ltd may not be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher. The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. While So Smart Media makes every effort to ensure accuracy, it can’t be guaranteed. Street pricing at the time of writing is quoted for products.

ISSUE 185 PROFESSIONAL PHOTO | 3

Contents

Issue 185

6 ProNews We’re rounding up the latest news and launches from the professional world.

8 Our Latest PPOTY Winner! We’ve got another spot prize winner, and Richard Adams is taking home the awesome 2S Crane Gimbal from Zhiyun.

10 TIPA Awards 2021 The results are in and we’re taking a look at the winners of the latest TIPA Awards, rated among the very top honours in the worldwide photographic industry.

12 Portfolio After being turned off photography by a bad school experience, Alex Broadway went on to be a top sports specialist.

20 Project 42 The Move Towards Motion

As Joseph Rodriguez studied to become a photojournalist, his training ground became the back set of his Yellow Cab.

– Commercial Shoots CVP’s experts give a steer on the kit you need to be shooting commercial videos.

48 Backing up to the BOSS

20 PRO TALK 24 Stories from the Street Photographer Ege IIicak shares his street photography philosophy.

61 Dump the Dust! Dust spots on your sensor can drive you mad but there are experts who can help.

BUSINESS 65 Break into Branding!

Film-maker Rick Bronks takes the LaCie Rugged BOSS for a shoot around London to see how it performs on the road.

Gillian Devine shows how to make a career helping others build their brands.

50 Selecting Your Style

68 Lisa Devlin – Cinematic Style

Amy-Leigh Atkins speaks to a selection of working pros to hear how they’ve developed their trademark style.

You might be a stills photographer, but there’s a lot you can learn from films.

56 Learn to Live Stream

We’re launching Pro Academy in association with Nikon, plus our Day in the Life looks at fine art photography and we’re talking Business Plans.

You’ve already got most of the gear, now it’s time to learn how to make this exciting and lucrative area pay.

71 Time to Turn Pro

30 The World According to Dench Look away now if you don’t want to see how Peter Dench tackled a naturist shoot in typical brazen style.

TECHNIQUE 32 A Workshop a Week! It’s always good to learn or refresh skills, and here’s a chance to take on a month’s worth of exciting assignments!

38 Affinity Workshop Sometimes you have the perfect shot in the wrong format, but here’s a fix.

4 | PROFESSIONAL PHOTO ISSUE 185

56 PROFESSIONALPHOTO.ONLINE

ADDING COLOUR | TALKING HEAD

Breathing new life into great classic portraits 80 GEAR 80 Tested: Panasonic GH5 II It’s a freshly upgraded classic, but what extras is the Mark II offering the pro?

84 Tested: BenQ SW271C In a hybrid world, BenQ has launched a monitor for both stills and motion.

84 86 Ross Grieve Portrait, street and wedding photographer Ross on the new BenQ.

PRO TALK 88 Things I Wish I’d Known We wrap things up with Peter Dazely recalling how he learned his trade.

HERE’S NO DOUBT that Terry O’Neill would have shot his striking portrait of Brigitte Bardot in colour had he been commissioned at a time when publications had the capability to print it. But he was a working press photographer and, back in 1971 when the picture was taken, the call was primarily for mono. All these years later, Terry’s library, Iconic Images, has taken the decision to sensitively add colour to this classic, and it looks as natural as if that was how it originated. It’s so good that I wanted to find out more about the process and how it came together. “It was a fairly straightforward process, just very fiddly and time-consuming,” says colourist

Luckily Terry “ shot some rolls in colour and I had the movie Bardot was working on as well for reference. ”

Clayton Hickman. “When I start, I amass as many colour references as possible, and luckily Terry had shot some rolls in colour, plus I had the movie Bardot was working on that I could refer to as well. “In Photoshop, I have to isolate every area of the photo that requires a separate colour. In Bardot’s case, I ended up with cut-outs for her face, eyes, lips, hair, cigar, shirt, the sky and the background foliage. Her hair was a particular challenge, as strands cover much of her face. I pretty much had to trace every strand! Then I start adding flat colour, trying to match the tone of the colour reference. The colours need to look convincing, and it’s almost like a digital painting at times.” Does Clayton feel Terry would have approved? “Iconic Images CEO Robin Morgan, who worked with Terry for decades, felt he would have been excited by it. For me, that’s the best response I could have possibly had.”

Terry Hope – Editor

❚ So well done that it looks like it was shot in colour, but which do you prefer? © TERRY O’NEILL/ICONIC IMAGES

50 PROFESSIONALPHOTO.ONLINE

ISSUE 185 PROFESSIONAL PHOTO | 5

FINE ART

OLYMPUS POPS UP A PEN THE FIRST CAMERA to be launched by the newly-formed OM Digital Solutions is the Olympus PEN E-P7, which features at its heart a 20MP Live MOS Sensor and five-axis image stabilisation that can offer up to 4.5 stops of protection against camera shake. A lightweight in the hand, the new model weighs in at just 337g body only and 430g when combined with the Zuiko 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 standard zoom. Meanwhile, advanced AF and Face Priority/Eye Priority AF algorithms borrowed

from the OM-D series models are also on board to deliver continuous focus on the face and eyes. Cost of the camera-and-lens combo is £849, and body-only price is £749. Also new from Olympus is the new Zuiko 8-25mm f/4 PRO which, being MFT, offers the equivalent of a 16-50mm range. Compact and lightweight and with a 3.1x zoom magnification, the optic can deliver everything from a wide-angle view through to standard lens. It’s also fully weather sealed, making it perfect for professional use in all conditions. Available from around now, cost of the new lens is £899. ❚ om-digitalsolutions.com

AFFORDABLE ART IS BACK IN TOWN! THE AFFORDABLE ART FAIR is returning to Battersea Park for a Summer Edition from July 8-11. Designed to give art lovers and interiors enthusiasts the chance to browse and buy from a curated selection of local, national and international galleries all under one roof, it will be the first time the event has taken place since March 2020, and it will be providing a vital platform for artists and galleries looking to emerge from a year in lockdown and without exhibitions. Art of all kinds will be on the agenda and, as always, there will be a strong photographic contingent from those who have made fine art a central pillar of their work. ❚ affordableartfair.com

NEW LENSES

NEW GLASS FROM NIKON AND PANASONIC THERE HAS BEEN a flurry of new lens announcements, with both Panasonic and Nikon unveiling their latest launches. From Panasonic comes a new lightweight 50mm f/1.8 optic that’s designed for its Lumix S Series, and it’s the second addition to the series of four f/1.8 large-aperture lenses that are based on the L-Mount system standard. Inside, there’s a lineup of nine lens elements in eight groups, including three aspherical lenses, one ED (Extra-Low Dispersion) lens and one UHR (Ultra-High Refractive Index) lens. Available now, RRP is £429. Also fresh on the market are two new lenses from Nikon, both designed to partner mirrorless Z Series cameras. The Nikkor Z MC 105mm f/2.8 is a professional

6 | PROFESSIONAL PHOTO ISSUE 185

S-line macro that features a nineblade aperture to deliver supersmooth bokeh, and Nikon’s anti-reflective Arneo and Nano Crystal coatings have been employed to combat ghosting and flare. The lens is capable of focusing down to just 0.29m and the AF focus limiter allows rapid acquisition of subjects from 0.29– 0.50m. Cost of the new lens is £990.

Meanwhile, the Nikkor Z MC 50mm f/2.8, which is priced at £649, can also turn in a great macro performance, with a minimum focus distance of just 0.16m and markings on its lens barrel indicating whether you’re shooting at a 1:4, 1:2, or 1:1 (life-size) magnification ratio. Once again, Nikon has provided a nine-blade aperture inside to enable excellent bokeh. Nikon is also sharing its vision on the future of the Z Mount range by announcing the development of the Nikkor Z 28mm f/2.8 and Nikkor Z 40mm f/2. The new compact and lightweight prime lenses are scheduled for release later this year. ❚ panasonic.com/uk ❚ nikon.co.uk

PROFESSIONALPHOTO.ONLINE

SPOT PRIZE WINNER!

In Association with

Get Your Entry in for PPOTY! Hearty congrats to Richard Adams, who has become our latest spot prize winner, scooping the amazing Zhiyun 2S Crane Gimbal with his outstanding shot of a very wet harvest mouse. UR SPECTACULAR PROFESSIONAL Photographer of the Year Competition just keeps on giving, with Richard Adams becoming our latest spot prize winner. Richard picks up the awesome Zhiyun Crane 2S gimbal, worth a cool £649, for his wonderful shot

HOW IT WORKS The competition is open until August 31, 2021, there’s no fee to enter and everyone is welcome to take part. We’ve teamed up with our friends at The Societies to tie in each of our ten categories to one of the Societies that operates under their umbrella. Along the way, we’ll be awarding exciting and valuable spot prizes to highlight the best of the entries. In September, we’ll be choosing a winner for each of the ten categories, who will receive not just the section prize but also a 12-month Professional Level Membership of the SWPP and a copy of Affinity Photo and the Affinity Photo Workbook, courtesy of Serif. Each of the ten winners will then be in with a chance of being judged our first-ever Professional Photographer of the year, and picking up that fabulous Panasonic S1R kit.

HOW TO ENTER All entries need to be made online through the Professional Photo website and you’ll be able to enter as many categories as you like, but we’re asking for single images only, and you’ll only be able to upload one image to one particular category each month, so a total of ten images a month across all the categories. Overall closing date is August 31, 2021. Full details of all the prizes plus terms and conditions can be found online.

THIS MONTH’S PRIZE THE FABULOUS ZHIYUN Crane 2S, worth £649, is a professional and highly intuitive gimbal for use by photographers and videographers, with a powerful 3-axis stabiliser system, which is designed for larger mirrorless and DSLR cameras. It features a 12-hour battery life for all-day operation and a lightweight carbon handle, which comes with multiple mounting points for use with monitors, mics and additional lighting. There’s also a quick release plate that allows the camera to be quickly and easily transferred to a slider or a tripod when required. Control is through a 0.96in OLED screen, enabling the user to go through the entire menu and to switch between modes in an instant. ❚ zhiyun-tech.com 8 | PROFESSIONAL PHOTO ISSUE 185

SPOT PRIZE WINNER: Richard Adams – Wildlife Category Harvest Mouse in the Rain I’M INVOLVED IN a harvest mouse breed-and-release project, with the purpose of reintroducing the species after a drastic loss over the years due to farming methods. I was given a tip off where a nest had been found, so an early morning was on the cards, as it was four hours’ drive away. I settled into position and pre-framed my shot and waited. That day, we seemed to get hit with all weathers and, as I was about to give up, thinking it was an old nest, I saw a slight movement out of the corner of my eye. They had moved their nest! I slowly panned my camera across, knowing any sudden movement would spook these little guys. I then spotted one sleeping on a branch, and couldn’t believe my good fortune. I took a few shots, just in time for the heavens to open up again and soak the two of us. I came away a tired but happy photographer that evening. Nikon D500, Sigma 105mm, 1/160sec at f/10, ISO 160

VIDEO Click here to see a film of the Zhiyun Crane 2S Gimbal in action!

Competition Portal: professionalphoto.online/ppoty PROFESSIONALPHOTO.ONLINE

THE WORLD’S BEST PRODUCTS

TIPA’s 2021 Award Winners! HERE’S SO MUCH great gear out there that it can sometimes be a little bewildering working out what might be best to invest your hard-earned spend on. This is where something like the TIPA Awards comes in: every year since 1991, a panel made up of experts from a worldwide selection of prestigious photographic titles sits down to consider what the equipment highlights have been over the previous 12 months and, following an annual convention where voting takes place, awards are handed out across a variety of categories. Canon has had a spectacular past year in terms of launches, and this was reflected in the fact that the company picked up no less than three awards, for Best Entry Level APS-C camera for the Canon EOS M50 Mark II, Best Prime Telephoto Lens for the RF 600mm f/11 IS STM and Best Photo Printer for its imagePROGRAF Pro 300. Nikon was another of the big photographic names to come away with a string of awards, picking up Best Advanced Full-Frame Camera for the Z 6II, while the Z 7II was named Best Expert Full-Frame Camera. Making up a hattrick of awards, the Nikon Z 14-24mm f/2.8 S was also named Best Wide-Angle Zoom Lens. Getting the nod twice was Fujifilm, winning the Best APS-C Advanced Camera Award for its beautifully compact X-S10 camera while, at the other end of the spectrum, its much-lauded GFX100S came away with the Best Medium-Format Camera Award. The Best APS-C Camera in the Expert Category, meanwhile, was Pentax, winning with its newly engineered and highly desirable K-3 Mark III. Sigma really hit the jackpot with a remarkable haul of no less than four top prizes, its highly innovative fp L being named Best Adavanced Photo/Video camera, while its 100-400mm f/5-6.3 DG DN OS Contemporary Lens bagged the Best Ultra Telephoto Zoom Lens title.

10 | PROFESSIONAL PHOTO ISSUE 185

As a proud member of TIPA, Professional Photo was on the voting panel for the prestigious annual awards, so say hello to the gear considered to be the best of the best over the past year.

Di III-A VC RXD, which was named Best Standard Zoom Lens, while its 70-180mm f/2.8 Di III VXD optic was voted the Best Telephoto Zoom Lens. Laowa took the Best Prime Wide-Angle Award for its classy 15mm f/4.5 Zero-D Shift optic, praised for the huge 65mm image circle it offers, which makes the lens suitable for both fullframe and medium-format cameras.

Photo Accessories

Meanwhile, the Sigma 105mm f/2.8 DG DN Macro walked away with the Best Macro Lens Award, while its 85mm f/1.4 DG AN Art Series optic was named Best Portrait Lens. Sony, meanwhile, was also highly decorated, picking up the Best FullFrame Professional Camera prize for the Sony Alpha 1 and the Best Expert Photo/ Video Camera for its Alpha 7S III, while the quirky Sony ZV-1 caught the eye of the judges, who named it Best Vlogger Camera. Another sign of the times was the Sony Xperia 1 III bagging the Best Photo Smartphone Award, while the company’s FE 50mm f/1.2 GM lens walked away with the title of Best Prime Standard Lens. Panasonic was also among the prizewinners with its highly conceptual Lumix DC-BGH1 being voted Best Professional Video Camera, while Tamron picked up two top prizes, one for its 17-70mm f/2.8

Of course, photography is about far more than simply the high-profile cameras and lenses, and the TIPA Awards also highlights some of the other top-performing products that managed to catch the eye of the experts over the past year. Picking up the prestigious Best Fine Art Printing Solution prize for its novel Authenticate Product Range was Hahnemühle, and the TIPA citation pretty much says it all: ‘Photographers who aspire to enter the fine art market understand that professional presentation and authentication play an important role in preparing their work for sale. Hahnemühle’s Authentication Product Range gives photo artists a complete package, including their world-renowned archival papers and portfolio boxes and special pre-printed Certificates of Authenticity. In addition, there’s now a free online print registry service for establishing provenance.’ Software specialist Zoner was another company picked out by the TIPA judges, with its Photo Studio Xpackage being named Best Expert Imaging Software. The citation noted it ‘offered a range of workflow, corrections, layer processing and effects in an affordable and easy-to-use format.’ The Best Professional Software Award went to DxO for its PhotoLab 4 advanced Raw editing software package. On the lighting front, the Best Lighting Technology Award was given to Profoto for its AirX technology, which can synchronise

PROFESSIONALPHOTO.ONLINE

TIPA 2021 AWARD-WINNING PRODUCTS | PRO NEWS

Fujifilm X-S10 Sony Alpha 1

Panasonic Lumix DC-BGH1

all Bluetooth-equipped Profoto Xenon flashes with a smartphone, while Best Portable Flash went to Godox for its Pocket Flash AD100Pro portable strobe. Best Tripod went to the Vanguard VEO 3GO series, Best Tripod Head to the Gitzo Ball Head Series 4 and Best Gimbal System to the Manfrotto Fast Gimboom and Gimbal series. On the monitor front, meanwhile, the ViewSonic VP2768a was named Best Enthusiast Photo Monitor, while LG scooped an impressive duo of awards, winning Best Professional Photo Monitor for their UltraWide Thunderbolt 4 and Best Professional Video monitor for the UltraFine OLED Pro. The Best Power Accessory was won

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Nikon Z 7II

Hahnemuehle Print – Protect – Authenticate Product Range

by the Nitecore SCL10 2-in-1 Smart Camera Light and Power Bank, while RØDE won Best Video Accessory for its highly innovative Wireless GO II system. Best Photo Accessory went to Hoya for

Sigma 85mm f/1.4

Tamron 70-180mm f/2.8 Di III VXD

Zoner Photo Studio X

its PROND GRAD Circular Graduated ND Filters, while CEWE won both the Best Retail Finishing System Award for its Photocenter initaitive and Best Photo Service for its Photo Calendar A2 Gold Edition. The Best Photo Lab Award went to Whitewall for its Room View visualisation system, which allows photographers to see how an image might look on a wall. Last, but by no means least, the revolutionary Asus ZenBook Pro Duo 15, reviewed in Professional Photo last month, won Best Imaging Computer.

❚ For a full list of the TIPA World Award 2021 Winners and all the full citations, head to www.tipa.com

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PORTFOLIO

The Power of the Alex Broadway found his niche when he decided to make cycle action his speciality, and he’s used his creative mind to develop numerous ways to picture this most demanding of sports. WORDS TERRY HOPE IMAGES ALEX BROADWAY

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Pedal

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PORTFOLIO | ALEX BROADWAY

The Power of the Pedal T

PREVIOUS SPREAD: Many major races take place within spectacular scenery, and it’s down to the photographer to find a location that makes full use of that fact.

BELOW: Sports photography is not just about capturing the peak of the action, it’s also about utilising the elements in a scene.

AKE A GLANCE through Alex Broadway’s stunning cycle portfolio and it’s hard to imagine that here was once someone who was turned off photography by poor teaching methods and who only found his way back into the medium through his love of cycling. “I was fascinated with cameras from around the age of 10,” he recalls, “when I used to play around with my dad’s SLR, which had no film in it. As I grew older, I got more involved and my dad then built a darkroom in our shed and I would spend hours locked away developing and printing. For me it seemed the logical thing to do to study photography at A-Level, but I found the lessons were awful: for every picture we took we had to write a small essay about why we had taken it, our influences and inspirations. I found that it took all the fun away and I ended up falling out of love with photography completely.” Instead of a career behind the camera, Alex was now more interested in cycling and he started to work as a mechanic at a local bike shop. This then took over his life for the next few years until he happened to be taking a trip to Hong Kong and, while there, he decided to buy himself his first DSLR. The speed and flexibility delivered by a digital way of working inspired him once more and suddenly he was hooked again, and he quickly realised that he had to find a way to bring photography back into his life. “I’ve largely taught myself everything I know,” says Alex. “I’ve learned through making lots of mistakes, but also through watching other photographers and looking at the work they’re

producing. In 2007, I quit my bar job and decided to try and make a career as a photographer and things just went from there. Among the little bits of work I picked up initially were some shifts for my local newspaper and, in between shooting pictures of prizewinning vegetables, disgruntled local residents and illustrating various animal-related stories, I was sent one day to cover a game of football. I absolutely loved the challenges it presented, and from that moment on I knew I wanted to be a sports photographer. “I covered football, then rugby and some hockey for the local paper – very badly in retrospect when I look back at those pictures now – but I was learning all the time and luckily the paper often only needed two to three pictures, which I could just about scrape together. After a while, I started to get some work for

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one of the non-league newspapers and once I’d built up a portfolio of decent action pictures, I approached a small football agency and from there I was given the opportunity to shoot Championship, League One and League Two games every weekend. “My big break came in 2009 when I was approached to shoot the Ashes for SWpix, a small independent sports picture agency. This was the first real big sporting event I’d covered and my first game of cricket above local level. That summer, I shot three of the five tests, feeling way out of my depth surrounded by all of the big-name photographers. I soon settled into it, however, and by the end of the series I’d had my first national newspaper front cover, multiple back pages and other usages inside. For a small agency up against the big names, it was a great showing, and my boss

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was delighted that we’d managed to do so well.” With his sporting photography credentials now firmly established, the final part of the jigsaw fell into place when SWpix started to work with British Cycling in 2013. With his love of the sport well known, Alex was given the chance to combine his twin passions and he’s since gone on to create a reputation for himself within this genre, with around 85% of his photography now being cycle-related.

ABOVE: If you’re a working sports photographer you have to make the most of whatever the elements choose to throw at you, and sometimes ‘bad’ weather can make for great imagery.

Two-wheel Challenge As for so many other photographers, the past year or so has been challenging for Alex, with work drying up completely as events were cancelled or postponed. Things are slowly starting to come back, but the problem now revolves around actually

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PORTFOLIO | ALEX BROADWAY getting to and from events, with Covid testing and quarantine following a shoot among the regular hazards. Planning can also become a nightmare as rules and restrictions change on a near-weekly basis. “Normally, my calendar is filled up months in advance,” says Alex, “but at the moment I’m planning for jobs only a few weeks or even a few days ahead.” In more normal times, Alex would be travelling the world attending a multitude of cycling events, such as the Tour de France, the UCI Road World Championships, MTB and BMX and the European championships. After coming to a halt for a time, things are now picking up, however, with the potential – Covid permitting – of the Olympic Games in Tokyo to look forward to in the next month or so. “Alongside SWpix I also work for Getty Images, plus various other commercial clients and brands such as Red Bull, IMG and Specialized,” says Alex. “My images are used by a multitude of clients around the world – advertising, websites, magazines, social media, everything really. But for me, nothing beats getting a picture published in a newspaper.” As well as having an inherent love for the sport of cycling, Alex has also gravitated towards this speciality because it offers so much scope for variety and creativity. Unlike some other disciplines, where photographers might be restricted by having to sit at the boundaries of the pitch, at most cycling events it’s possible to choose to be as close or as far away from the action as you want. Action will often also take place outside, offering the potential for great light, often crazy and unpredictable weather, beautiful locations and fans close to the action, all of which can help to make outstanding pictures.

“Working on road races, I’ll often be on the back of a motorbike,” says Alex, “which brings with it a whole new set of challenges and opportunities. I love working this way: you’re in the heart of the race, with the best seat from which to watch it all unfold. You spend your day shooting from the bike or racing from spot to spot, making a choice of when to leap off and shoot a picture, before jumping back on and trying to

ABOVE LEFT AND TOP LEFT: There’s always the possibility of thrills and spills on the track and you need to be constantly alert. When Alex is covering longer events, such as the 25-hour Red Bull Timelaps, he also tries out techniques, such as here, where the subject was lit by a single Elinchrom Quadra head, while red and blue light domes were placed in front and behind the track. The exposure was 1.5secs and the camera was moved to create light trails, with the flash on rear curtain synch to freeze the rider.

LEFT: Low-key lighting, a low angle and great timing combined to create this memorable image at the London Velodrome.

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make your way back past the peloton. It’s a real mix of emotions, often incredibly frustrating but always exhilarating – descending an Alpine stage at nearly 100km/h on the back of the moto while trying to keep out of the way of the riders is always a sure-fire way to get the adrenaline going.” Although held inside, track cycling is one of Alex’s favourite events to cover. With some of the races lasting over 100 laps, he gets plenty of time to play around with different creative techniques. “You’re often allowed to use flash, which for indoor sports is quite unusual,” says Alex. “Being able to play with the light can lead to some really cool images.” Track cycling is also fantastic for panning shots. It takes a bit of practice to get the shutter speed as low as possible while still retaining a degree of sharpness. For the most consistent results, Alex usually works at somewhere around 1/8sec to 1/13sec.

Kit for the Job For any sports photographer, a bag full of fast, long lenses is a prerequisite and Alex is no exception. A Nikon user, he travels with two D6 bodies and one D5, while lenses are a combination of zooms and primes, including a 14-24mm, 24-70mm, 70-200mm, 80400mm, 300mm and 400mm, all of which are f/2.8 aside from the f/4.5-5.6 offered by the 80-400mm. Meanwhile, Elinchrom Quadra flash heads are packed

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for times when location lighting becomes an option. “The lenses I work with will change according to circumstances,” says Alex. “If I’m working on a motorbike in a cycling race, I’ll have a 24-70mm on one body and a 70-200mm or 80-400mm on the other, with a 14-24mm in an easy-to-reach pouch. “Most likely I’ll use the 400mm f/2.8 for the finish line, sometimes with a 1.4x converter when extra reach is required. For track cycling, BMX and MTB, where you can get much closer to the action, a 2470mm and 70-200mm will cover most bases, while for things like football and rugby I’ll work with a 70200mm on one body and a 400mm on another.” Another piece of crucial kit is a wireless transmitter, and Alex works with the trusty Nikon WT-6. “It lets me send pictures straight from my camera to a remote editor,” says Alex, “who can edit, caption and send images out to our various clients.” It’s rare for anyone to have such a perfect combination of jobs and, for Alex, the love he has for cycling sports in general is shining through in every frame. As the world slowly starts its return to some kind of normality, he’ll be looking to get back in the saddle and to pick up a career that has been nothing short of dazzling up to now.

ABOVE: When he’s shooting inside, Alex often has the time to plan out shots and one of his favourite techniques involves panning the camera as the riders pass by. PREVIOUS SPREAD: Having spotted this glorious field of sunflowers, Alex then took up position and waited for the riders to reach the required position in the frame.

More information: ❚ alexbroadway.co.uk

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PROJECT Driving a yellow cab around New York in the volatile ‘70s and ‘80s, Joseph Rodriguez pretty much saw it all, and his trusty camera helped him create a striking visual record of that time.

WORDS TERRY HOPE IMAGES JOSEPH RODRIGUEZ

Life Through a ABOVE: Self-portrait in the cab, 1984.

EW YORK WAS an edgy and sometimes dangerous place back in the ‘70s and ‘80s and, as the driver of a yellow cab working the 4am to 4pm shift, there was no hiding place for Joseph Rodriguez. In the early morning and throughout the day, he would pick up a wide assortment of characters who, back in those premobile phone and iPad days, were more than often willing to engage in conversation and to share their stories during their brief encounter. What makes Joseph’s story rather different, however, is that he was an aspiring photojournalist during the latter part of his stint as a taxi driver, studying his craft under no less a luminary than the

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legendary Mary Ellen Mark at the city’s International Center of Photography. “I had all these pictures I was taking of the street through the window of the cab,” he recalls, “and she really challenged me. She said, ‘It doesn’t seem that you’re brave enough to take pictures of people in the cab. There are people right next to you. Take pictures of them.’” “The thing was that, when I was working, I didn’t really have the time to go out looking for photographs. So, the only other option left to me was to take pictures while I was out doing my job. And I was driving all around the five boroughs into the city, and it became a little like a voyage, this idea of moving through time and space in this little yellow box for 12

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Window hours a day. And the one place I wasn’t really looking, or pushing myself, was the back seat, and this idea that I would start to photograph my passengers was a very important critique for me.” While, when he looked, he could see very clearly what a wealth of rich material he had all around him, at first Joseph was reticent to broach the idea of a photograph. After a while, however, his confidence grew and it became a regular occurrence, with passengers usually more than happy to oblige. And, in terms of subjects, there was a rich seam to work with, especially as the day started to wake up. First off, there might be a search for fares as the diehards from the vibrant nightclub scene started

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All pictures © Joseph Rodriguez, courtesy Galerie Bene Taschen

to make their weary way home. Then people would start coming into the city and Penn Station would begin to come alive, and the hotels would be stirring with people on their way to the airport. After nine in the morning, things would begin to slow down as people were now in their places of work and, by 11am, lunchtime would be fast approaching, with some more lucrative airport runs to search for. Those taking their place on the back seat might range from an immaculately turned-out young family on their way to church through to an elderly couple who had been married for 40 years; a drag queen on his way home from a performance through to a gangster who was full of menacing presence. ›

ABOVE: A panhandler at Bowery and Houston, East Village, 1984.

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PROJECT | JOSEPH RODRIGUEZ

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Meatpacking District, Greenwich Village; East Village; Family going to church on a Sunday morning: 220 West Houston Street; Birds over Midtown; all shot in 1984.

Naked City Perhaps unsurprisingly, there were stories that have shades of those from the classic film noir The Naked City which, back in 1948, drew heavily on the full diversity of life on the mean streets of New York. “One time, I got in the taxi line for the Mineshaft S&M Club and a fare jumps in,” recalls Joseph. “‘89th Street and Park Avenue,’ he says. As we begin to get closer to his Upper East Side destination, I glance in my rear-view mirror. He’s changing out of his leather outfit – with whip and boots – into a pair of khakis, Oxford shirt and penny loafers. By the time we arrive at his Park Avenue apartment building, he’s transformed into a Wall Street banker and the doorman greets him.” Another time, one of Joseph’s regular fares, a sex worker, who would want to be picked up around daybreak to go home to Brooklyn, had an altercation in his cab. “This one night she gets in the cab and wants to make a stop to pick up her money stash in some bushes, where she’d hidden it,” he says. “We pull off and stop at a red light and then, from out of nowhere, her pimp jumps in the back seat. He tells me to take them to East New York, near the Pink Houses, a notorious Brooklyn housing project. “Then he starts smacking her around, yelling ‘Where’s my money?’ I’m driving, trying to stay cool, but then he pulls a knife out. I don’t know what’s gonna happen. At first, she’s trying to play it like she didn’t make much, then, after the knife comes out,

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she gives him the money, quick. I dropped them off and he gives me the fare out of her money. Didn’t give me a tip though.” There were big issues going on in New York back then, things that shaped the whole feel of the place and which added to the general edginess. In his introduction to Joseph’s new book of pictures from that time, novelist Richard Price remarks that it felt as though New York was ‘getting its teeth kicked in on a daily basis’. At the time, the city was beset with such things as the AIDs crisis, various municipal budget meltdowns, hiring freezes and labour strikes. Meanwhile, street crime was off the hook, cocaine turf wars were raging and the prevalence of crack had begun to impose its own brand of devastation. Price sums it up neatly: “To drive a cab back then, you either had to have a death wish or come to the job with a biography that inured you to the danger or graced you with such intuitive empathy/curiosity that to see and hear and sometimes engage with the cavalcade of humanity sliding in and out of your back seat trumped the nightly game of Russian roulette.” All in all, it took no small amount of nerve to carry a camera and to ask for a picture at the end of the ride, but Joseph went for it and the result was a personal documentary of the many faces of a hardworking city. Ultimately, people turned out to be surprisingly open and trusting, and a request for a picture, although not always granted, wasn’t met with

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JOSEPH RODRIGUEZ | PROJECT

the kind of downright suspicion that would doubtless greet such a proposal if it were to be made today. In terms of a grounding in the art of street photography, it was, perhaps, a little brutal at times, but Joseph learned to grab his picture in as short a time as possible and yet still somehow manage to come away with something where there is a clear connection, a priceless moment when something of value was extracted from the situation. “Life moves fast,” says Joseph. “You’re in a transportation vehicle, taking a person from A to B, and sometimes in a matter of a minute or two you get the most life-changing and profound statements that come from these individuals. And then you never see them again. And that’s the beauty of photojournalism: sometimes it’s just by chance, right? Even the war photographers can be like that, you know: they get lucky, they get that moment. It’s commitment, but it’s also luck, right?”

Rediscovering the Work Joseph started out shooting with an old Praktica SLR, which set him back $58 – all he could afford at the time – and eventually this was superseded by an Olympus OM-1, a delightfully scaled-down jewel of a camera that could be handheld at ridiculously slow shutter speeds when required. One standard and a 28mm lens and one roll of Tri-X a week was all the budget stretched to, and the images were

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meticulously filed away and, by and large, forgotten about for decades, while Joseph went on to make his mark as a distinguished photojournalist and teacher. Finally, the work was rediscovered and revisited and Joseph was able to see his project through fresh eyes and he realised that what he had on his hands was a treasure trove of pictures that were far stronger than he’d ever remembered them. Collectively, they told the story of a very special time in the life of a city and they provided an insight into the lives of some ordinary and extraordinary people, whose only connection was the fact that at one point in time they’d all just happened to be sat in the back seat of a cab on their way somewhere. The work has now been edited into a book and is also currently on display at the Galerie Bene Taschen in Cologne until July 31. Those simple images that were originally shot as a private project, designed to do nothing more than hone street shooting and photojournalist skills, have, through time, become a valuable record of a turbulent period in the life of a city from someone at the epicentre of what was going on. What went on inside that unremarkable little yellow box on wheels gives us an insight into a world that has changed so much, and it’s a testament to the remarkable power of the camera. More information: ❚ josephrodriguezphotography.com

Taxi: Journey Through My Windows 19771987 is published by powerHouse Books, £27.

Joseph Rodriguez – Taxi is on show at the Galerie Bene Taschen in Cologne until July 31.

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PRO TALK

Stories from the Street

Germany-based photographer Ege Ilicak regularly travels the world to photograph people in their natural environment on the streets, building up an insightful portfolio in the process.

WORDS JESS JOHNSTON IMAGES EGE IIICAK

TREET PHOTOGRAPHER AND regular Affinity Photo user Ege Ilicak provides captivating glimpses into people’s lives through a single frame, his love of documenting the human condition and portraying scenes from differing cultures clearly expressed through his work. It's a highly individual project, and we caught up with him to discover more about the motivation behind his work and to hear how his passion for life on the streets first began.

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us about yourself Q Tell and your work. I’m a photographer focusing mainly on street photography and long-term travel projects to document the daily lives of different cultures, using street and portrait photography styles. I grew up and studied in Ankara, Turkey before I moved to Heidelberg, Germany, in 2010. Even as a kid, I was always interested in photography, and the work

of Magnum photographer Ara Güler inspired me deeply. Ara documented his home city of Istanbul from the 1950s right up until his death in 2018, and it was his work that led to my photographic journey starting in 2009. Since then I’ve tried to visit a new country each year to document the local people in their native environment, and this eventually turned into a recently completed project, ‘Dreams from a Northern Country.'

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PRO TALK | EGE ILICAK you tell us more Q Can about this perhaps? When I travelled to Russia for the first time back in 2015, I noticed there was something special about this particular nation. There was a harmony of religion, melancholy and dreams of a better future in people, and this attracted and inspired me to start a project that documented the daily lives of Russian people in the context of their social environment. Between 2015 and 2020 I made a total of seven visits to Russia, and I spent over two months there in total. I travelled from St. Petersburg to Moscow and from there to different towns of the Bashkortostan Republic, the first ethnic autonomy of Russia located between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains. Dreams from a Northern Country showcases the human landscapes of the largest country in the world, and focuses on their dreams and wishes, their religion, hard-to-reach goals and their never-ending hope.

fascinates you Q What so much about lives on the street? The richly complicated streets of the world are a kind of poetic meditation for me. The complicated and fascinating motion that drives life also fuels my passion for documenting it and sparks my inspiration. On top of that, there are moments that captivate me and drive my desire to press the shutter. Sometimes it’s a story that unfolds among strangers, at other times it’s a lonely person entering my frame, or it could just be the light creating a cinematic scene on the streets.

do you go about Q How capturing the magic of a situation? For my travel projects I make sure to study the culture and traditions of the place I’ll be photographing before my departure. At the same time, I try to avoid looking at photographs of the location beforehand so that I’m not tempted to shoot the same scenes. Having

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EGE ILICAK | PRO TALK

an unbiased view with a unique composition style is important. If I’m going to be undertaking street photography, I don’t have any particular plans for my frames. I improvise, like a jazz musician, while walking on the streets. I keep an open mind and stop only when I recognise a good composition. I walk, observe and wait, remaining confident that the unexpected, the unknown, or the little surprises of life await just around the corner. And, most of the time, the magic of the situation is waiting there for me. For street portraits, the story is a bit different. When I see someone on the street that I think is special, I don’t hesitate and immediately ask if I can take a photograph. Usually, I have just a few minutes, but that

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time can become a special visual conversation between myself and the people I’m photographing. When this chemistry is there, a magical shot happens.

you ever find you Q Might envisage a particular shot in advance?

Yes, when I find the perfect place for a photograph. However, it may take hours to complete even a single composition. Once when I was visiting Montpellier in France, I found an amazing place to shoot, and I remember waiting for a long time for something magical to happen. After an hour, all of a sudden, an old couple entered the frame, kissed each other, and left. It all happened within few seconds,

and I was patient and lucky enough to be there to capture the moment. On the other hand, there are some days when I just want to be opportunistic. Then, I might walk seven to eight hours without a break just to be able to capture everything the street offers me.

the motivation Q What’s behind your photography? I think the primary motivation is my love of the visual arts. I simply love the aesthetics of photography, and being part of this creative process makes me happy. Secondarily, it is the love of documenting the human condition. Showcasing other parts of the world through my eyes to viewers is quite an experience. ›

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PRO TALK | EGE ILICAK was your first Q What ever camera?

Back in 2008 I flew to Singapore with my family. My younger brother has always been interested in photography and dreamed of having a Nikon D90 camera, and my father promised that he would buy him one when we arrived. Once we were in the camera shop, my father wanted to buy me a camera as well. Since I was not interested in photography at the time, I tried to stop him, but I had no chance. After a long resistance, he convinced me to buy a cheaper camera, the Nikon D60. That was my very first camera, and I still keep it today.

your go-to Q What’s equipment now? Presently, I work with two cameras. For my digital work, I'm using a Fujifilm x100F, while when I’m shooting film it’s a Nikon F100.

did you decide Q Why to focus on candid or street photography in particular? To my mind there are no stories without humans being involved. And I think there is not a single photograph out there without a story behind it. Using that philosophy, I decided to focus on candid and street photography to capture the stories of people.

you have a favourite Q Do photograph to date? I think this would have to be a portrait of a barber in Havana, Cuba. In 2012, I was lucky enough to visit and travel across this country. As I walked the streets of Havana, a man in the shade caught my eye. He was a barber sitting alone in the barber chair, waiting for customers. What was shocking to me was that the salon he was working in consisted of nothing but a single old chair. And the man had only one pair of scissors. Without a conversation, he posed for me, and I took a portrait of him. This particular photograph was selected as National Geographic YourShot Editor’s Pick in 2013.

there a particular Q Isplace in the world that you would love to visit? Morocco tops my list of places I want to photograph. I recently watched Bernardo Bertolucci’s film The Sheltering Sky, and it’s triggered my urge to visit Morocco even more.

were your creative Q Who icons when growing up? For me the most important ones are Ara Güler, Steve McCurry, Alex Webb, Elliot Erwitt, Roger Deakins, Vittorio Storaro, Emmanuel Lubezki, Edward Hopper, Sebastião Salgado, Josef Koudelka, Joel Meyerowitz, Daido Moriyama, Shōmei Tōmatsu and Eikoh Hosoe.

what do you Q Finally, personally think makes a great photograph? I think if an image can excite the viewer or make them think or smile, that’s the sign of a great picture. I hope people can make a special visual connection with my pictures and, by doing so, perhaps feel the emotions I wanted to express.

You can view more of Ege’s work on Instagram @local.frames. Reproduced with permission from Affinity Spotlight: ❚ affinityspotlight.com

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EGE ILICAK | PRO TALK

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World According to Dench

The

Every photographer knows those jobs where you’ve had to go the extra mile to get the shot, but would you bare all for your art? Dench proves that he’s not averse to the Full Monty. OME PHOTOJOURNALISTS PREFER to shoot with stealth, from the shadows, click and move, to diligently observe an event rather than be an active part of it. I, however, prefer to get stuck in, which in itself is arguably a form of stealth. During my career, I’ve had to wear a pink wig, dress up as a schoolboy and Spiderman and, perhaps most surprisingly, wear nothing at all more than once. The first occasion was in 2001 on assignment for Men’s Health magazine. I’d been sent to Palm Springs, California to report on the health benefits of nudism. I’d never packed such a small suitcase for a big trip. Arriving at the 240-bed, world-class Desert Shadows Inn nudist resort, I met up with the journalist Ben who I’d be sharing an apartment with – Ben would go on to write the book We Bought a Zoo, later turned into the 2011 Hollywood movie starring Matt Damon and Scarlett Johansson. We quickly established some ground rules – clothed in private, naked around the resort – the idea being that we’d blend in that way and be accepted quicker. Two Englishmen whose buttocks have only

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ever glimpsed the sun, don’t blend. Even more of an eye-opener in America, two men who haven’t been circumcised, don’t tend to blend. The first few days were spent lounging around, letting people get used to us being around – by the pool, jacuzzi, in the bar and at the Sunset Cafe. Water volleyball was pleasant, slapping balls around the tennis court a little more unsightly. One afternoon, we went on a ‘special hike’ into Lost Shoe Canyon. Wearing only sunglasses, socks, trainers and factor 60 sunscreen thickly applied to my privates, half a dozen of us began the ascent. I was shooting on medium-format film and this was tarantula country, and things-that-slithered country, and the terrain was widely dotted with cacti. I had to squat in the shade to change rolls and found I had agility I didn’t think possible. Straddling the San Andreas fault at the summit was liberating, although I was nervous of the volatile crack. The plan for the week was to get an all-over tan, but we saw so many operating scars on the guests that we clung to the shade. It turned out to be one of the least sexual places I’ve ever visited, meaning that the dreaded, unwanted you-know-what… never came up. Most guests were of retirement age and looked like deeply tanned melted waxworks.

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PETER DENCH | PRO TALK

“

Cooking on the barbecue was a challenge and naked karaoke was interesting, especially formation dancing to the Village People dancefloor classic 'Y.M.C.A.' It turned out that a sizeable portion of the nudists worked in uniform – medical workers, firefighters and law enforcement officers. They’d regularly see trauma in their working lives and found salvation in being free of grime and garb. Others were there for body acceptance, some for medical reasons. By the end of our stay, Ben and I were sneaking out into town and finding bars where we could drink with the ‘textiles’ (as nudists refer to them). The second occasion I found myself slipping on my birthday suit was in 2003, when I was on assignment for The Observer Music Monthly magazine – remember that and the Sport Monthly? Arriving at the Nudestock music festival at the Laguna del Sol clothing-optional resort, Sacramento, California, I slipped into my room and slipped off my boxers. Nudestock was the biggest nudist music festival in the USA, rising from hundreds of revellers in 1998 to what was now a throbbing 2,500-plus. Understandably, it was a more celebratory place than Desert Shadows. I photographed flowers being dropped from a helicopter over the bare-skinned revellers, learned the art of creative body paint and how to maintain eye contact. The 22-bum salute in honour of festival organiser Vince is as vivid today as it was back in 99ºF sunshine. Cooking on the barbecue was a challenge and naked karaoke was interesting, especially formation dancing to the Village People's dancefloor classic 'Y.M.C.A.' The climax of the festival was the awards evening.

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Along with Observer journalist Akin, I won first prize in the ‘Furthest Travelled’ category. Bouncing up onto the stage, we received a bottle of wine and a badge, which I found I had nowhere to pin. Nudism is not a euphemism for ‘swinging', and generally drug use is taboo. Overall, I enjoyed photographing naked and I’m convinced I wouldn’t have got the pictures I did if I hadn’t got stuck in and occasionally stuck out. I had a nice time and, along the way, learned a valuable lesson about parallax error using a rangefinder camera.

”

PETER DENCH An Olympus Visionary, Peter is a highly regarded documentary photographer, writer and commentator, with a wry sense of humour running through his work. peterdench.com

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TECHNIQUE

A Workshop

a Week!

It’s always good to learn or refresh skills, which is where the popular 52 Assignments books from Ammonite come in. Here’s a taste of what you’ll find in the latest addition to the series WORDS AND IMAGES ANTONY ZACHARIAS HE BEST IDEAS are often strikingly simple, and the concept of a series of books that set serious photographers a number of challenging assignments relating to a chosen theme – 52 of them in total, thereby perfectly aligning to the numbers of weeks in a year – most definitely falls into that category, laying down a structured framework for learning that can be highly beneficial to a photographer. The Assignments series has been a big success for Ammonite Press, with subjects covered so far ranging from nature through to black and white, travel, landscape, experimental and street photography, and the latest addition to the series, by author Antony Zacharias, covers off

photographic exposure. It’s essentially a workshop in a book, an eclectic collection of innovative challenges, each with a notional timespan of one week to complete – though obviously it’s up to the individual to pace things to their liking – and no-one, however experienced they might be, will come out the other end without having learned something more about their craft. Here then is a taste of what to expect, with a full month’s worth of assignments from the latest Photographic Exposure volume to work your way through, and if you find that you enjoy the experience then why not make the investment and sign up for the full package? It costs just £12.99 per volume, so something of a bargain if it takes a whole year to work through!

❚ ASSIGNMENT 07

Capture the ‘Blue Hour’ THE BIG BLUE SPECIAL KIT ❚ Tripod ❚ Remote shutter release ❚ A suitable smartphone app that gives you exact timings for the ‘blue hour,’specific to your location, such as PhotoPills www.photopills.com

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The ‘blue hour’ refers to the period of the day when the sky and ambient light takes on strong blue tones. Despite the name, it occurs in the half hour or so before the sun rises and after it sets. The light at this time is very soft and gentle. It is reflected back from the sky, which acts as a large diffuser and produces a soft blue hue. This is a wonderful time to capture images, as the colour blue carries its own feeling into an image—serenity, mystery, peace, or

tranquillity, for example. Since the light is so soft at this time, there are no harsh or strong shadows to worry about. Your assignment is to capture a series of three intriguing images during the ‘blue hour.’ The subject matter you select can help to emphasise this time of day, so choose carefully. Both urban scenes and landscapes can benefit from the contrasting blue sky and accompanying hues, as well as the feeling of stillness and tranquillity that these times of day provide.

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LEARNING FRESH SKILLS | TECHNIQUE

ABOVE: Artificial orange lights can look striking against the deep blue of the sky during the blue hour.

TECHNIQUE

PRO TIPS

❚ You won’t have much time, so make sure

❚ Cityscapes can be a great subject for

you’re in place well before the sun rises (or sets) so that you’re ready to capture images when the sky turns inky blue. ❚ Longer shutter times will usually be required since the light won’t be very bright or strong at these times. ❚ The light will be changing quickly. Pay extra attention to your exposure settings and adapt these accordingly.

these images, as the city lights will be illuminated and yet there will still be sufficient ambient light to reveal detail in the sky and the buildings. ❚ Your camera’s meter can easily be confused by the strong blue light, so pay attention to the white balance. Select the Daylight setting if shooting JPEGs, or shoot in Raw for more flexibility in post-processing.

EXPOSURE NOTES ❚ The ‘blue hour’ is not actually an

hour. It usually lasts for around 30–40 minutes, depending on your location and the time of year. ❚ A clear sky will amplify the effects of the blue hour, although if there are a few clouds in the sky they can add additional interest to a scene.

› PROFESSIONALPHOTO.ONLINE

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TECHNIQUE | REFINING YOUR LOOK

❚ ASSIGNMENT 17

Be Inspired by the Cinema

ABOVE: Applying a blue tone can make modern architecture appear very futuristic, similar to a scene from a science-fiction movie.

MOVIE MAKER Cinematic photography is a style that creates images that look very similar to still frames from a movie. The letterboxstyle crop (black borders at the top and bottom of the image), shallow depth of field, mood, colour palette, toning, and general aesthetic can result in evocative images that look as though they’ve come straight from a blockbuster. While a lot of the effects will be created afterwards in post-processing, composition will be key in this assignment. Start by thinking about your view and the type of movie you could see it featuring in: a thriller, drama, or even a horror, for example. Are you capturing a dramatic landscape, an urban environment, a portrait, an everyday street scene, or a moody low-lit view? You could even choose a favourite movie and try to emulate a scene from that. Once you have your idea, set out to capture your image, thinking ahead about how you will be editing it afterward to create the desired effect. Remember that movies are about storytelling, so your cinematic image should have a narrative too.

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THE PROCESS

TECHNIQUE

❚ Use the Split Toning function in Adobe

❚ Think about your lens choice. Are you

❚

❚ ❚

❚

Lightroom (or other software) to apply different colours to the highlights and shadows separately. Experiment with other colour edits, such as white balance, saturation and vibrance, but resist the urge to make large, bold changes, as it’s all too easy to oversaturate, resulting in an imbalanced and over-processed image. Adjust and boost the contrast using Curves, the Black and White points sliders and the Clarity slider. Again, be careful not to overdo things here. Add a little grain to give your photograph more of a movie-like quality. Play with the exposure settings. This will allow you to brighten (or darken) the whole, or parts, of the scene. A ‘letterbox’ crop can be added in Adobe Photoshop. To do this you need to change the image ratio to widescreen by setting the width to ‘16’ and the height to ‘9.’ Then you’ll need to create a black layer underneath your image and then crop it, which will leave two parallel borders, one above and the other below.

going for a dramatic wide-angle view, or will you use a telephoto to crop in tight and compress the scene? ❚ Editing these images will be key. Shoot in Raw format to give yourself lots more in the way of flexibility when it comes to post-processing. ❚ Consider how the use of different light (intensity, direction and even colour) will affect your final image and help you to create something dark and dramatic, or bright and modern.

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LEARNING FRESH SKILLS | TECHNIQUE

❚ ASSIGNMENT 41

Street Photography TECHNIQUE ❚ A wide depth of field is preferable when tackling street photography, ensuring that most of the scene will remain in sharp focus throughout. ❚ Pre-focus your lens to a set distance. That way you’ll then know that when your subject is at a fixed point (say, 2m away), they’ll be in focus when you press the shutter.

SHOOT FROM THE HIP Street photography is a popular genre, but can be very difficult to execute well. It’s not as simple as aimlessly photographing while walking around outside, but rather trying to craft a composition with a message, whether that’s something humorous and witty, unusual, contradictory, political, or generally observational. One of the main dilemmas for a street photographer is deciding how to photograph. If you pre-warn your subjects of your intention to take an image, you will inevitably compromise the candid moment, resulting in a change of expression or timing, and the loss of that magical instant. Some photographers choose to simply get up close and photograph without warning, but people can be unhappy with a camera pointed at them and their personal space being invaded. Other photographers can come across in an aggressive or threatening manner, which must be avoided at all costs. Alternatively, using a long telephoto lens from afar allows you to be more discreet, but removes the personal engagement of being out on the street. The compromise - and a good way to capture strong street photographs - can be ‘shooting from the hip.’ This technique requires you to hold your camera down by your side discreetly, while approximately aiming and pressing the shutter, rather than composing through the viewfinder as normal. To work effectively, you will need to dial in the exposure settings in advance (as well

ABOVE: It can take practice to get used to not framing your image while looking, so you may well end up with some wonky horizons or accidentally cropped scenes.

as pre-focusing your lens at a set distance) so that you don’t waste precious moments changing settings, and are primed and ready to capture your images quite literally at the press of a button. For this assignment, aim to capture a range of street images in your local area using the shoot from the hip technique. Perhaps you’ll decide on a common theme as you explore and experiment more. If so, make sure you edit all of the images in the same style so that they work well as a set.

EXPOSURE NOTES ❚ Some cameras have an auto ISO feature, which enables the camera to adjust the ISO for the optimum exposure in line with your chosen shutter speed or aperture.

PRO TIPS ❚ Patience is a key ingredient for achieving a successful street photograph. Scope out interesting backgrounds and be prepared to wait until the timing is exactly right to capture the image.

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LEARNING FRESH SKILLS | TECHNIQUE

❚ ASSIGNMENT 50

Shoot Pre-Dawn SPECIAL KIT ❚ A powerful torch. ❚ Smartphone app that gives you

exact timings for the ‘blue hour,’ specific to your location.

TECHNIQUE ❚ The early times involved in this assignment require extra planning to ensure that you get to a location and set up in the dark. Plan on arriving with plenty of time to avoid rushing. ❚ The light will be changing quickly, so pay close attention to your settings and be prepared to amend them regularly.

BEFORE DAWN Very early in the morning, in the half hour or so before the sun rises, the light is very soft and gentle. Often referred to as ‘pre-dawn’ light, the light is reflected back from the sky, which acts as a large diffuser and produces a soft blue hue.

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While pre-dawn technically falls within the ‘blue hour’ period we spoke about previously, there is something slightly different about this early morning phase. There is an inherent peace at this time of day, so your assignment is to enjoy this tranquil time and to use it to create an image that captures the serenity of where you find yourself. Perhaps you’ll choose to photograph an image of solitude, a dreamlike landscape, the stillness of water laden with reflections, or a quiet urban view devoid of people and traffic. The hardest part of this assignment will be getting up early! You’ll want to arrive at your location well before sunrise so that you’re already set up as the first gentle wave of light emerges from the horizon. Wherever you find yourself, ensure that while taking the image you also take a moment to stop and admire the view and the stillness of your location.

ABOVE: Mist and fog are often found at this time and can add a real sense of serenity to your images.

EXPOSURE NOTES ❚ The low-light levels will require slower shutter speeds and a stable camera, so a tripod and remote shutter release are strongly recommended. ❚ The white balance will be heavily influenced by the blue light. Shooting in Raw will give you the scope to alter this in post-processing. ❚ If you’re shooting in JPEG, experiment with your white balance settings. Shade should provide accurate results while moving to the Cloudy setting should add a little warmth to the scene.

52 Assignments: Photographic Exposure by Anthony Zacharias, RRP £12.99, Ammonite Press, available online and from all good bookshops. www.ammonitepress.com

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@SOTTI

THE AFFINITY PHOTO TUTORIAL

Success at a

Stretch! If you’ve got a great shot but your client needs it as a landscape rather than upright, then rather than lose the sale you can turn to Affinity Photo and reformat it in a matter of moments. WORDS & ADJUSTED IMAGES MATTY GRAHAM

MAGINE THIS SCENARIO: you get a call from the picture editor of a paper or magazine and the conversation goes like this. ‘We love your image and want to use it on a spread, but the portrait format won’t work – do you happen to have the same shot, but as a landscape maybe?’ If you don’t then frustratingly it could mean that you’re going to miss out on a tasty sale, but fortunately Affinity Photo

offers you a quick and easy alternative. By using a selection of tools found within this fully featured software package, you can expand the canvas of the image before copying and pasting new pixels and filling the space to change the image from a portrait to landscape shot without compromising on image quality. Despite being such a potential life saver, this is actually a relatively simple technique, and one that offers the

Before photographer a crucial second take at composition. Now, we’re not saying this piece of software trickery will work perfectly for every image you try it on, but learning this little hack could come in very handy one day and might make the difference between your image ending up in print or being dragged into the recycle bin. It at least gives you an alternative to simply saying you can’t help, so let’s see how this technique comes together.

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IN ASSOCIATION WITH AFFINITY PHOTO | TECHNIQUE

STEP ONE

DUPLICATE THE LAYER WITH YOUR IMAGES open in Affinity Photo, head over to the Layers panel on the right-hand side of the interface. We need to Duplicate the Background Layer, so use the shortcut keys Control and J. Next, locate the Add Pixel Layer option and click on this before dragging the Pixel Layer below your Duplicate Layer. Finally, drag your original Background Layer (at the bottom of the Layer stack) into the recycle bin.

STEP TWO

CROP TO REFORMAT HEAD TO THE Tool box at the left-hand side of the interface and select the Crop Tool – the keyboard shortcut is C. Drag the handles out to the left and right to reformat the shape of the frame so there is now space on either side. If you want, you can also drag one of the top handles down to achieve a format that’s more landscape in feel. Apply the Crop by hitting the return button.

STEP THREE

SELECT YOUR PIXELS MAKE SURE THE Background Layer is selected and then head back over to the Tool bar to select the Rectangle Marquee Tool. Next, draw out a selection from beside your portrait subject to the edges of the frame. Make sure you don’t include any pixels of your model, since otherwise you’ll have to remove these later.

› PROFESSIONALPHOTO.ONLINE

ISSUE 185 PROFESSIONAL PHOTO | 39

TECHNIQUE | IN ASSOCIATION WITH AFFINITY PHOTO

STEP FOUR

COPY AND PASTE WITH THE SELECTION made, it’s time to copy and paste the pixels you’ve selected. You can do this by heading to the top of the interface and selecting the Edit menu, before then scrolling down to Copy and repeating the process but selecting Paste. Alternatively, you can use the speedier shortcut option of selecting Control + C for Copy and Control + V for Paste. You’ll see a new Layer has now been added to the stack and this now needs to be selected.

STEP FIVE

STRETCH THE PIXELS HEAD BACK OVER to the Tool Bar again but this time select the Move Tool – keyboard shortcut V. Drag handles will appear around the selection, so use the side handle to drag the selection, stretching the pixels to the side of the frame in the process. You’ll find that every image will cope with this manipulation differently and not every shot will work, but the hope is that you should be able to stretch the pixels far enough to reformat your frame. Once you’ve done this, click off the frame and then repeat steps three, four and five for the remaining side of the frame.

EXPORT THE IMAGE IF YOU STILL need to rejig the frame, simply head back into the Move Tool and drag the pixels further. Once you’re happy, export the image by moving to the top of the interface and selecting File > Export and then saving the file in your chosen format – JPEG, TIFF or other.

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@JENNAANDERSON

STEP SIX

Before The stretching technique can work with a variety of shots and can look entirely natural when it’s completed.

After

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IN ASSOCIATION WITH AFFINITY PHOTO | TECHNIQUE

@TIKH

CLONE DIFFICULT BACKGROUNDS WHILE OUR MAIN method for expanding a canvas works incredibly well for images that feature a simple monobloc background, if you’re working with something that’s more cluttered then you’ll need a different approach. Start with the same method of expanding the canvas, making a selection and copying and pasting in your new pixels. However, instead of stretching the pixels, this time just drag the new selection left/right, until it lines up with the background, whether that be a brick wall or perhaps a door that’s in frame.

Before

After

More information: ❚ affinity.serif.com

VIDEO Click here to watch an exclusive video where Matty talks through this and other useful Affinity Photo post-production techniques in real time.

PROFESSIONALPHOTO.ONLINE

ISSUE 185 PROFESSIONAL PHOTO | 41

THE MOVE TOWARDS MOTION IN ASSOCIATION WITH

Rules of Engagement If you’re working with commercial clients to spread the message about their services then video provides a highly engaging medium, but what kit do you need to offer this service?

F YOU’RE A photographer with a role that involves servicing local businesses then you’ll know by now the nature of the work you’ll be asked to do on a regular basis. Inevitably, you’ll be looking to provide promotional-style imagery with a marketing end use in mind, perhaps profile pictures of staff along with other general background shots that will go on to serve as a useful resource for company websites and the like. All of which is still highly relevant, of course, except that these days the majority

of switched-on companies will also be asking for some video content as well, and if you’re not in a position to provide it then a rival who is might well steal your work. The reason is simple: video has been proved to be a highly engaging form of content, particularly to a younger audience, while band widths are now generally wide enough for moving content on a website to be easily viewed by most people. So, while video production might still just be a part of the overall story, it’s an increasingly important part, and if you’re The prevalence of highquality hybrid cameras means that it’s now possible to offer both stills and video to your commercial clients.

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astute and forward-thinking enough to get up to speed on the basics of film production then you’ll have a potentially highly profitable new service to offer your clients. At the very least, you should have everything on board in terms of equipment and expertise so that you can manage a straightforward video presentation if required, and this would be enough to ensure that you don’t miss out down the line if that’s what the client is asking for. So what do you need in terms of a basic setup that will enable you to not only offer stills but also to go after the rapidly expanding market for commercial promotional videos? At CVP, it’s a question that’s being asked of its expert sales team on a regular basis, and as an equipmentagnostic retailer they’re well placed to offer advice on what to invest in, whether you simply want to dip your toe in the filmmaking water or you’re looking to get

PROFESSIONALPHOTO.ONLINE

Video clips for use on company websites are now big business and the market is due to grow further still.

more seriously involved going forward. “There probably isn’t a standard kit as such,” says CVP’s Jake Ratcliffe, “since this will be very much down to personal choice, but you’ll certainly need all the pieces of equipment you would expect, such as a camera, appropriate lens, tripod, audio kit and some basic lighting. “Within those specific pieces of equipment there are, of course, things we recommend more often than not for filmmakers who are shooting smaller commercial productions, but we like to take time to understand our customers’ needs first so that we can recommend the correct solution. We would also advise popping into one of our showrooms, which have now reopened, to see kit in the flesh before investing in a solution.” One of the most common scenarios that you’ll face when putting together a short film destined for the website of a

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commercial client is the need to set up and produce an interview or a presentation, perhaps with the MD of the company or potentially the staff or maybe even customers providing positive feedback.

INTERVIEW SCENARIOS There are so many ways to treat these and you need to consider every case on its merits: sometimes it’s good to have the interview filmed inside so that the backdrop is the work environment, and you’ll be able to control the lighting better and avoid unwanted extraneous noises, such as passing traffic or planes passing overhead in a situation such as this. At other times, however, shooting outside can be the right way to go, with its more informal style and surroundings that could be more pleasing on the eye. You also have to take on board the fact that you’ll usually be dealing with people

who potentially aren’t regulars in front of camera, and here the challenge is to make someone who could be nervous appear as relaxed as possible on screen. You should also be looking to keep the footage lively and interesting, even if the person speaking might not have the natural mannerisms that normally only come with being a professional presenter. As you become a more experienced filmmaker, you’ll start to find ways to get around the issue, such as having an A and a remote B camera set up, so that you have alternative angles you can cut to throughout the interview, and you could also film in 4K so that you have the resolution in the file to crop into the scene to vary the look you’re achieving. “With interviews, there are a few ways to spice them up and keep the viewer engaged,” agrees Jake, “and some nice B-roll over the top or a second angle are ›

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IN ASSOCIATION WITH

both common ways. Another technique that has become quite common is slight movement, which can be done in a variety of ways. The most affordable solution is to invest in a slider, and if this comes with a motorised head then the movement you introduce will be silky smooth, totally controllable and repeatable, though if you’re recording audio you’ll have to be careful not to pick up the sound of the motor. These are just really versatile pieces of kit, very affordable and capable of giving you some great B-roll so that you get some good variety into the mix.” Lighting is also a consideration if you’re going to be filming inside or need some fill on location. This was once quite an issue, since lighting kit was bulky, expensive and needed to be mains operated. These days, however, things have moved on considerably, and lighting suppliers such as Rotolight have come to the fore and are delivering the perfect solution for filmmakers on a budget who might be working single handed. The Rotolight Aeos (CVP price £899.99), for example, is a powerful bi-colour location LED light that weighs in at under 1.5kg, while the NEO 2 three-head kit (CVP price £899.99) features three ultraportable little heads along with a built-in Elinchrom Skyport flash receiver, three lighting stands and professional ball heads, a power adaptor so that the lights can be mains as well as battery powered, diffusers, filters and a flight case to carry them all in. “Recommending lighting really comes down to a few things,” says Jake. “How much light do you need? How big can the lights be? Can you carry modifiers? In an ideal world, you would have a nice, large

THE MOVE TOWARDS MOTION | TECHNIQUE

Rotolight’s NEO 2 units are small, light and battery-powered, making them perfect for location filming . Picture: Jason Lanier

Lighting is a “consideration if you’re going to be filming inside or need fill on location. While once bulky, expensive and mains operated, things have now moved on. ” The well-priced Rotolight NEO 2 kit comes complete with lighting stands, filters and a flight case.

source with some fill and an edge light. But depending on what you can travel with, you may have to make some compromises.”

GETTING THE SOUND RIGHT

A motorised slider, such as this version from Hague, can add movement to a scene.

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Audio is another area where you have to be prepared to adapt to get the optimum result in every situation, with there being no one-size-fits-all solution. “When capturing interviews, most people will either use a shotgun mic boomed overhead or a wireless lavaliere system,” comments Jake. “From my experience as a camera operator, a good quality shotgun mic boomed nice and close to your audio source can sound better than wireless lav sets. ›

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SUBSCRIBE AND SAVE ON THE COVER PRICE Our Digital edition has all of the content of the printed magazine plus...

❚ Bonus features ❚ Extra pages ❚ Video content ❚ Single issue £3.99 Have you seen our free to view anniversary issue? A celebration of our best bits from our first year under new ownership

JOEL MEYEROWITZ / INTERVIEW

INTERVIEW / JOEL MEYEROWITZ

Memories of Distant Summers W WORDS TERRY HOPE IMAGES JOEL MEYEROWITZ

Joel Meyerowitz reflects on his celebrated series of Provincetown portraits, shot throughout the 1970s and 80s, which now forms part of a major new show of American photography.

IDELY RENOWNED for the incisiveness of his unposed street photography undertaken in New York – something he was inspired to take up after seeing Robert Frank at work – and for the fact that he was an early advocate of colour, Joel Meyerowitz has also more recently become known for his series of striking large format portraits undertaken in the idyllic former fishing village of Provincetown, Massachusetts in the late 70s and early 80s. This was the place he headed to without fail every › summer, armed with a large camera and a self-set

ABOVE: Sarah, Provincetown 1980. 20 / PROFESSIONAL PHOTO ISSUE 180

DID YOU KNOW?

ABOVE: Lynette, Provincetown 1981. PROFESSIONALPHOTO.ONLINE

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ISSUE 180 PROFESSIONAL PHOTO \ 21

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IN ASSOCIATION WITH “However, the beauty of modern wireless lav microphone sets is that they can be easier to work with than boomed shotgun microphones. Some shooters may even opt to use both, and that way they’ll capture the best audio possible. If I was a one-person crew working nowadays, I would be checking out 32-bit float audio – 24-bit recording with 8 extra bits for volume - which is essentially Raw for audio. It could make your life much easier while out on a job, since it means you don’t have to worry about levels.” Finally, especially if you happen to be dealing with someone who’s not a professional in front of the camera, you need to think about helping them to remember their lines, which can be a big deal when you’re nervous. Investing in an autocue, which are available at a wide range of prices, can really help someone who is struggling, but once again there is a technique to learn whereby you’re reading from a screen but still looking natural. “I use a teleprompter myself while doing my pieces to camera for the CVP YouTube videos,” says Jake, “and it really helped when I first started getting in front of camera. What solution you use really depends on the style of interview you’re going for, but making your subject feel as comfortable as possible and having a clear Q&A list prepared in advance is always going to result in a better, more natural response than reading off a prompter.” Essentially, the secret of a smooth, wellorganised promotional video lies in preparation and knowing exactly what you’re doing, and having the right level of kit to hand to cope with every eventuality. You’ll also need to get a detailed brief from your client so that you have a clear idea in advance regarding what you’re going to need to be covering. “If you’re not clear on what you need to achieve to make your client happy then it’s not possible to get your job done properly,” says Jake. “You also need to think about the length of the video, and most of the time you’ll be looking to create a

THE MOVE TOWARDS MOTION | TECHNIQUE

A boom mic solution, seen here with a Sennheiser mic in position, works well.

The modern attention “span is so incredibly short that getting your message across quickly and efficiently when it comes to online video is crucial. A good intro is key to hook people in and creating something creative and unique will make the piece stand out. ” The F2 and F3-BT Zoom Field Recorders are perfect for location filming.

NEXT MONTH: If you’re working on a production, it’s essential that you are prepared, so we’ll be looking at how to compile a shot list and what it might need to contain.

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production that is suitable for a website, so it might need to be no more than a minute to a minute and a half long, which can feel longer than you think. “The modern attention span is so incredibly short that getting your message across quickly and efficiently when it comes to online video is crucial. A good intro is key to hook people in, as is creating something creative and unique that will make the piece really stand out.” For the modern imaging professional, video production is becoming a must-have skill, so make sure you’re fully prepared, with a trusted equipment partner behind you to advise on what you’re going to need. See video as an opportunity not a threat, and it could be the perfect way to boost the income of your business and to add a valuable string to your bow.

❚ cvp.com

JAKE RATCLIFFE ONE OF CVP’s resident team of technical experts, and a self-confessed camera nerd who gets way too excited over kit, Jake’s background mirrors that of so many creatives these days. After graduating with a degree on photography, he took up a freelance career and found that many of his clients were asking for video services so, rather than turn the work away, he started to teach himself the filmmaking basics. Having been based at CVP for four years now, Jake epitomises the ‘equipment agnostic’ approach of the company and devotes his time to advising customers who might be looking for impartial feedback on which products to invest in as they look to make the same journey into motion.

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Back Up with the

BOSS!

Filmmaker Rick Bronks headed to London to take the LaCie Rugged BOSS hard drive out for a spin and returned enthusing about the simplicity of backing-up crucial files while on the road. HERE ARE TWO types of people who routinely back up all their stuff: those who are naturally well organised and others who have experienced firsthand the sinking feeling and sense of panic that comes with knowing that you’ve just lost a load of crucial and irreplaceable work. If you don’t take precautions, it’s a given that it will happen to you at least once in your lifetime and, when the worst comes to pass, that will be the point where you’ll realise just how crucial it is to always have every possible safeguard in place to save your professional skin, and you’ll never be caught out again. As a working videographer, I always back my files up on an ongoing basis, and as soon as possible after a take. There’s always the possibility of a corrupt memory card, or some camera error that comes along to mess things up for you. You should never get complacent because, technology being what it is, it’s never going to run perfectly 100% of the time. Even if you’ve got the security of dual card slots and you’re under pressure to be tempted to ‘do it later,’don’t take chances: back up at all stages and you’ll never have any regrets. Of course, it has to be said that on location this can be tricky at times, particularly if you don’t want to be hauling a laptop, card reader and hard drive around with you. However, there’s now no excuse to put your faith in things just working out, since the folks at LaCie have produced a piece of kit that’s promising to soothe away all your backup woes, and it’s simple to work with – no computer needed. They’re so

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With the BOSS plugged into his iPhone, Rick was able to browse all his files.

confident this is the solution for you that they’ve even called it the BOSS, and this is one piece of kit that you really should be thinking carefully about adding to your arsenal if you want to stay safe. Ruggedised in the now-familiar LaCie orange rubber, the housing shields a lovely 1TB SSD drive. All very reassuring, of course, but what makes this device really special is its built-in connectivity and ability to back up your stuff wherever you are – and fast. BOSS is actually an acronym that stands for ‘Back-up On Set Solution,’ Once you remove the rubber cover on the side of the BOSS drive a host of sockets is revealed.

so it’s clear the audience that LaCie is targeting with this device. However, don’t go thinking this is something that’s purely aimed at the upper-end filmmaking world, because it has an audience that goes way beyond this, and it comes with the potential to ease your backup woes at the push of a button, whatever level of photography or filmmaking you might be working at.

USING THE DRIVE Tucked away behind all that silver and orange is a clever little display, which will show you the battery level, connected status, remaining storage and a bunch of other useful information. It looks rather snazzy too when it lights up and goes through the various modes. It’s controlled by a single button that blends perfectly into the rubberised shell, and this is all you need. No

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IN ASSOCIATION WITH complicated menus, and you need to do nothing other than insert your memory card, press the button and then wait. That really is all there is to it: the device will back up the contents of whatever you pop into it, so stills or video or anything else all gets taken care of at a press of a button. Once done, the screen tells you to click the button and remove the card. It’s so simple – and it works. It was pretty quick too – on the shoot I was undertaking around London, I didn’t find myself waiting around for the card to back up at any time. And what is really good is that the backups are incremental. The Rugged BOSS knows what it’s already backed up, so each time you pop your card in it will only back up the things that are new. You can override this and do a complete copy each time should you choose, but I don’t feel there’s actually a need for it. The package also comes with a swathe of adapters to charge its internal battery, so if you’re a traveller you’ll be pretty sorted anywhere in the world. I started my day’s shoot with 100% power and, after several backups, I was still rocking at about 88%. I would imagine that you’d be fine for backups for a long day’s shoot, so that’s reassuring. As well as the power adapters, there’s also a sea of orange cables, giving you the opportunity to hook into whatever device that you might happen to have with you. There’s a Micro USB, USB-C and a Lightning cable, so you’re likely to be fully covered, no matter how you want to connect to it. There’s also a USB-C to USB-C cable included as well, for hooking into a laptop like a conventional hard drive.

Once the cable of choice is plugged in, it can be fed around the drive and neatly stored.

The Rugged BOSS “knows what it’s already backed up, so each time you pop your card in it will only back up the things that are new. ” Once you remove the rubber cover on the side of the Rugged BOSS, a whole bunch of sockets is revealed. There’s the power input to charge the battery, USB-C to connect to a computer, the SD card slot for your instant backups and another USB-A socket. There’s also a Micro USB socket, which is where you can plug in your adapters. I chose to use the Lightning cable, and this plugs into the back of the Rugged BOSS. I realised that the design is such

WATCH RICK’S FILM! Click through on the QR Code to watch Rick at work around London, backing up to the LaCie BOSS unit.

| ADVERTORIAL that once the cable of choice is plugged in, it can then be fed around the drive and stored back into the rear compartment. It’s a neat and clever touch, and makes this a really sleek device with no trailing cables anywhere. Another feature that was appreciated was the ability to actually get the SD card in and put the cover back on the side while I was backing up, so I was able to perform this function while I caught my train. It was perfectly happy doing its thing while it I packed the kit away and ran to the platform. With the USB-A port, you can also hook in a card reader, so if your workflow doesn’t involve the SD format then you can use whatever card format you like, just plug and play. Meanwhile, when the device was connected to my iPhone, I was able to open the app, browse the files on the drive and I also had a bunch of options, such as backing up to another drive connected to the BOSS or adding watermarks to my stuff. It’s a solid app and the browsing works a treat. I’ve had drives in the past that connect with Wi-Fi and it’s always been a bit of a faff. The LaCie, on the other hand, is an absolute joy to use, and if you’re out and about or travelling home and want to send a preview to a client then you can do easily, direct from your smartphone or tablet. It’s a very well thought out app. There’s even a setting to charge the phone from the Rugged BOSS’s battery, which is super handy if you’re out of juice and need a top up on the move. Of course, with all your footage being on a really fast SSD, it means that you can whack in the USB-C cable, link to your computer and get working on your stuff straight away. I was able to pull in the footage I’d shot directly from the drive, load it into Final Cut Pro and start editing immediately. I created the project and associated files on the Rugged BOSS itself, meaning that once I was back at my desk with my main edit station, it was still there and ready to go. Now you really have no excuses for not backing up. Trust me, you never want to experience that sinking feeling, so make sure you stay safe! More information: ❚ lacie.com ❚ cvp.com ❚ Rick: satureyesmedia.com

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Putting on theStyle

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In a competitive business like photography, you need a look that defines who you are and sets you apart from the crowd. We asked ten pros to share the secrets of their visual identity. WORDS AMY-LEIGH ATKINS REATING A STRONG visual identity within your photography is no easy task. Part of the process of becoming a professional involves exploring what you want your body of work to look like, and this process doesn’t stop once you start attracting paying clients. I’ve worked with many established photographers who are still trying to refine their visual style, sometimes years into their career. As creatives, it’s only natural for us to want to experiment on an ongoing basis, but it’s important to define your style and to consistently deliver

this in everything you shoot. Sometimes, people won’t even need to see your name to know that they’re looking at one of your photographs, and when that happens you know you’re doing something right. I set out to talk to ten different photographers about the journey they’ve undertaken to discover their visual identity. It’s fascinating to hear their responses, and it should inspire you to look for a sense of self-discovery in your own work as well, and to question what your visual identity is as a photographer. Once you’re sure you’ve arrived at where you want to be, you can

then potentially look at creating a preset to suit, a real time-saver and something we talked about in detail last month. It can, of course, be difficult to shake up your approach if you’ve got clients booking you for what you’re already offering, but you always need to be evolving and you can’t afford to stand still. Rest assured, you’re not alone in your fears, and you can refine what you have without losing your edge. Here’s how our line-up of pros have arrived at their own signature looks, together with some post-processing advice for good measure.

Gingerbeard Weddings MY BACKGROUND IS in film, so without really thinking too much about it, I leaned towards a cinematic style with my stills, focusing on contrast, with shadows/light my main go-to. I was in my third year of shooting weddings before I realised how I liked to shoot, and what my style was, and at that time I began to attract lots of couples who worked in and around the film/TV industry. During the pandemic, I started shooting street in my backyard – namely the city of Manchester – and I found some amazing locations that I bookmarked for future weddings. One was in Castle Field near the bridge used in Peaky Blinders, and I saw this insane shaft of light in between the bridge, lighting up the brickwork. I managed to capture a guy walking through and knew

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if I had a wedding in that area, I would try and capture something similar. Roll on a full year later and I had a wedding in the same location, and I managed to capture something I had envisaged all that time before. A mix of luck, repetition and knowing what I wanted to capture made it happen. I get asked a lot about shooting and editing hard-light scenarios. When I’m looking for little patches of light during my portrait shoots, I set my shot up, typically using my manual-focus Leica M10-P, and then dial my shutter speed up to 1/4,000sec at f/2 and ISO 100. Because I’m maxxing out my shutter, my subjects will be at least 2 stops underexposed, and then in post I’ll aim to apply my preset. If there’s more work that needs to be done beyond this, then I’ll typically use the Graduated Filter in Lightroom to really

bring out that contrast of light and shadows. Dodging and burning will be another go-to that I’ll be using regularly. ❚ gingerbeardweddings.com ❚ @gingerbeardweddings

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REFINING YOUR LOOK | TECHNIQUE

Agi Lebiedz MY STYLE HAS been described as ‘engaging, poetic, refreshing and natural’ and ‘filled with nostalgia’. These words touch me each time, not only because they’re so kind and warm, but because this description is so on point to what I am as a photographer. I’d like to think that my style is natural and that it closely resembles true colours/hues and skin tones, which is very important to me. Developing style definitely takes time and it’s a process that varies from exciting to daunting – especially when you know what you want, but you’re not sure how to get there. I came into the world of digital photography after studying analogue processes many, many years ago. So, while I knew what to do in-camera, the editing side was still a bit of an unknown for me. I’m pretty sure we’ve all been

there: the never-ending tweaks of the sliders, a crucial part of finding our own voice. It’s trial and error and it’s still a continuous and ongoing journey. Having my own family photography voice/style doesn’t mean that I have to pigeonhole myself into a certain way of shooting that stays still no matter what. I like changes and experimenting as well

– I might not necessarily show the end results on my socials, but there is so much more I’d love to explore and try. My top editing tip is to use Lightroom brushes. I’ve recently been asked about a few of my edits, and each time the conversation revolved around these. ❚ agilebiedz.com ❚ @agilebiedz

As a processing tip, I would say you should never crop too close in the frame. Shoot for composites and details you might want to use later, and allow a story to come to you by looking at angles. Try if

you can to never use the textbook shot, but look for your story and then edit accordingly to enhance that narrative. ❚ ejlazenbyphotography.co.uk ❚ @ejlazenbyphotography

EJ Lazenby MY IMAGES ARE all about the relationship between horses and humans, and I’ll draw on art history and my own practice as a painter to create images that will often be composites, and which are carefully colour balanced through grading and Photoshop actions. I’m heavily influenced by art, and am a true pictorialist, always looking to create narrative and a reason for the image. I love the one-light dramatic styles of artists such as Caravaggio and Rembrandt, with powerful, dark backgrounds, but also the detail and symbolism of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and their attention to naturalism, myths and legends. Due to my formative years when I used photography to help me create paintings, my imagery now tends to have a strong identity and style. I love to use texture overlays throughout my work, which I create with acrylic paint, combining these with photographs of natural surfaces so that the resulting image becomes something that has a painterly slant.

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TECHNIQUE | REFINING YOUR LOOK

Sean Bell I’M A PRODUCT of several years’ worth of trial and error, and have been curiously pushing and pulling and exploring different approaches to the creative, narrative and postprocessing aspect of my work for about 15 years now, across a wide range of disciplines, from personal projects to weddings and commercial work. In my early personal work, I allowed myself to play a lot with shape, form and balance and to weave my way through what I did and didn’t like. I feel that I’ve definitely carried the visual aspects of this early exploration into my wedding work. I’ve been doing this for a while but still feel creatively young and naïve. I continue to study every day, observing people and watching how they move, how their limbs bend, the gestures, the outtakes and the quality of light: even without a camera, I find that I’m always framing. When you’re carrying out postprocessing, my advice for wedding/

portrait work is to keep an eye on skin tones. Pull back on the contrast/clarity when you can. As much as consistency is vital, you need to take it on board that your preset won’t always look the same from one wedding to the next. Instead, you should embrace the location, the time of year and the lighting conditions, and then edit to them accordingly.

Find the palette that suits the scene. If you’re shooting in the blue hour, don’t try to make it the golden hour. Try not to edit after downing six bottles of IPA, since you’ll only have to re-do it all the next day, and with a sore head. Truth is that alcohol clouds your colour vision, kids! ❚ seanbellphotography.com ❚ @seanbellphoto

Daniel Horvath I GUESS MY visual identity comes from my classical musician background and over 30 years in the music industry. I started out as a food photographer, but was always more interested in fashion, and found myself at major fashion weeks around the world, shooting the stylish people I saw walking the streets. I’m massively influenced by Garcon Jon and Adam Katz Sinding, who are incredible street photographers. Before I found my style, I used presets and tried out different edits alongside. I like warm, moody, brownish colour tones, but wanted to keep things natural and to not over-edit things. More recent influences are Samuel Elkins and Joe Greer, whose style is more natural, with a greenish look and grain as well. I think your style is always changing; I don’t believe there will be one style that stays the same throughout your career, but a strong look is definitely needed if your

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brand is ultimately going to be able to stand out from the crowd. Generally, I like to underexpose my images. I’m a manual and simple guy, and

love fixed lenses and not overthinking things. The key for me is to find the colours of the city, because each one will be different. For example, I’m based in Europe and would love to use New York presets, but learned that the places I was shooting in wouldn’t respond in the same way. So, I developed my own presets for each city I’m shooting in, and that helps me to edit faster when I’m travelling between fashion weeks around the world. Time is limited, and I’ll be out all day on the street and in the night I’ll need to edit and send files to clients and then hit the streets the next day and repeat. I have to work quickly and efficiently. My best tip would be to analyse the location where you’re working and to try to find the colours that exist there and the ones you like, and then see if you can match them. Don’t go forcing something that doesn’t look natural. ❚ horvathdaniel.eu ❚ @styletaster

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REFINING YOUR LOOK | TECHNIQUE

Abigail Steed MY VISUAL IDENTITY is all about keeping things as real as possible. I’m not one for glossing a day: if something looks interesting I’ll shoot it and, at the editing stage, I’ll try to make it come alive. Most of the time, I’m hoping to provoke an emotional response and transport couples back to the day, be it with laughter, tears of joy or WTF! It’s taken a while to learn to shoot in the way I want to. There’s a ton of pressure on when you’re shooting a wedding and you’ve been asked to produce a roster of key shots, but what pushed me forward and made me braver was the realisation that there were people out there who didn’t want a set of standard pictures and who were willing to trust me to capture the essence of the day, rather than just give me a list of what they thought I should be shooting. When you’re processing your images,

you need to play around with things to see what looks good to you, and usually less is more. And if you’re spending hours editing a photo because something doesn’t look quite right, then you’ll

probably discover that it’s not the greatest shot in the first place and it could be time to bin it and move on. ❚ abigailsteedphotography.com ❚ @steedabigail

Women by Michelle White MY VISUAL IDENTITY as a photographer revolves around allowing people to feel beautiful and empowered through my lens. I believe that everybody is beautiful and should experience love and appreciation for themselves. I like to show people that it doesn’t need to take masses of styling, make-up and studio space to capture beauty. I ensure all of my women understand I am not trying to make them into models: I’m simply allowing them to feel free, and be captured in a safe and secure space. Woman by MW originally came to life when some of my friends were having a rough time so, on a whim, I suggested we all head to a local beauty spot next to a lake, and we were just five women having fun, snapping photos in the sunset. It just felt like I lifted them all from the rubbish day they were having and I absolutely loved that feeling. ❚ michellewhite.co.uk ❚ @woman_by_mw

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TECHNIQUE | REFINING YOUR LOOK

Shutter Go Click THE ELEMENTS OF photography that excite me are constants throughout my body of work. Symmetry, reflections and in-camera creative techniques such as the use of prisms and double exposures. These tools give me an empowering ability to create something that’s unique to me. In the fast-paced environment of wedding photography, it’s all too easy to stagnate by falling into a more ‘traditional’ approach, but I figured that if I were to make images that didn’t creatively fulfil me then I might as well be chained to my desk in a 9-5. I’ve been photographing weddings and portraits since 2012, and still share images on social media from 2014 that match my aesthetic all these years later.

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Some would argue that means I found my style pretty early on in my career, but even almost a decade on I’m constantly evolving, finding inspiration all around me, even in the unlikeliest of places. Your style is as much a way of life as it is a fuel for likes and followers. Yes, the key traits of my imagery have existed for a long time, but visual style isn’t something that should ever be immovable. It flows forward with you and is influenced through experience, inspiration and the passing of time. On the editing side, the Graduated Filter, Radial Filter and Adjustment Brushes in Lightroom are my friends, since I’m using a lot of prisms, copper pipes and all kinds of funky stuff in my photography. I find that a lot of selective

edits, focusing on one portion of the image, are my most effective tools. Using the Graduated Filter over a prism effect or the Radial Filter over a copper pipe-created ring of fire, followed by the Dehaze slider, can bring in some beautiful saturation and contrast to an otherwise hazy effect. Colour-wise, I like my greens to be green and my colours moody but vibrant. I finish every single image I deliver in Exposure, applying grain and sharpening, and I call this my special sauce. Editing for me is a means of enhancing in-camera techniques as opposed to transforming a photograph into something that’s entirely different. ❚ shuttergoclick.com ❚ @shuttergoclick

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REFINING YOUR LOOK | TECHNIQUE

Remain in Light I STUDIED FILM and always loved watching productions with a distinct visual style, and this has had a massive influence on my work. I also like making the environment part of the story. I pay a lot of attention to composition, both while shooting and during postproduction. I love order in photographs – straight lines, centred subjects, repetition, symmetry - but I also love it when chaotic or incongruous elements enter into the equation. As a hobbyist, I didn’t really compare myself to other photographers. When it became my job and I got to grips with my industry, I was suddenly looking at the work of my peers a lot. I started comparing myself to them, finding fault in my images and thinking they had to look a certain way to be successful. Something clicked for me around 2017/2018. I was going through my images from the past year to make my annual round-up, and I felt really happy and proud of what I’d taken. I realised I had my own style and didn’t need to try to look like other photographers. Over time, I’ve worked a lot at building a varied skillset in shooting and editing.

There are some areas where I feel solid now, but still many that I know I want to improve on. The majority of my editing is in Lightroom, and I suggest exploring all the panels in the Develop module – don’t be afraid to play around and experiment with the sections and sliders. More specifically, the HSL sliders are your friend when it comes to skin tones. Again, play around until you find a look you’re happy with. If you have a

couple with very different skin tones, then the adjustment brush combined with temperature and tint sliders, plus saturation, is really helpful. Another thing I do is to use the Transform panel and Distortion slider to straighten out those lines – this will make such a huge difference to photos with buildings and walls in the scene. ❚ remaininlightphotography.com ❚ @remaininlightphoto

Camilla J Hards

IT TOOK ME longer than I care to admit to find my real style and identity. Even now, I look back at work I did five years ago and it tends to make me cringe. I also think it’s a learning curve. It takes time to really get your eye in and to see things you wouldn’t necessarily spot when you first started out. For example, I look back and think ‘How did I not know how to use the White Balance slider?’ At the editing stage, be true to yourself. It’s so easy to get wrapped up in trying to mimic the work of others. I also find that you can put pressure on yourself to maintain a certain look. Edit the way that suits the job! Not every wedding of mine suits the exact same edit. And I tweak my base preset to suit

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each day. Some weddings are warmer, some are cooler, some are punchier, some are softer. I used to try and make sure each wedding looked exactly the same edit wise, but often it’s not possible and sometimes it just doesn’t suit. ❚ camillajhards.com ❚ @camillajhardsphotography

At the editing “stage, be true to yourself. It’s so easy to get wrapped up in trying to mimic the work of others. ” ISSUE 185 PROFESSIONAL PHOTO | 55

Are You Set to

Stream? As a professional photographer, you already have many of the basic tools you need to get involved in live streaming, and this is a sector that is set to grow rapidly in the years to come. WORDS JULIAN MITCHELL TREAMING HAS BEEN with us for a number of years, but the pandemic has most certainly crystallised its worth and ignited its promise. Suddenly, we were all faced with a world where live events were on hold for the foreseeable future and streaming, in all its many forms, offered a solution of sorts. We now live in a world where educators, churches, sports fans and many others are reaching out to a growing audience that wants to tune in, and increasingly professional photographers and videographers are also finding this is a niche that offers tremendous potential. Big equipment resellers such as CVP have recognised what is happening in the streaming market and now package up gear for different streaming clients. Their bundled solutions include packages for fitness, education, house of worship, sports, music, kids’ activities, demonstrations, business, tutorial, gaming, cooking, podcasting and – one that perhaps belies the company’s film and TV heritage – a package for Netflix programming. It’s seriously big business. CVP streaming expert Mat Recardo says that the company’s marketing in

Travel photographer and filmmaker Joe Allam started streaming after realising the potential uses of the Blackmagic ATEM Mini Pro.

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this area is only a response to the calls they are receiving from individuals and micro companies who see opportunities in the current and future markets. “The obvious and initial catalyst has been the restrictions on attendance for events like weddings and funerals,” he says. “For the last 18 months, we’ve had many phone calls from anybody who has any kind of business or hobby that involves people in groups. These people’s work stopped all those months ago and they now have had to adapt what they do through the process of live streaming.”

POST-PANDEMIC But if the pandemic was the cause of this growth, what happens when Covid finally disappears: will the need for streaming be evaporating as well? Mat doesn’t think so: “Streaming was around before the pandemic in one form or another. What it’s done is open the eyes of those people and it’s encouraged them to do more.” From the perspective of photographers, there’s a huge opportunity here, and it’s one that’s set to grow as people have now become accustomed to live streaming and are increasingly comfortable with the technology. The US-based YouTube

channel PhotoJoseph started out with photography and video content only, for example, but is now focusing on streaming and live streaming, to great effect. “I was doing live streaming on a basic level long before I even got into video,” explains Joseph, “but we’re talking here about webcam and webinar types of production. Then, as cameras started to improve on the video side of things, I started pushing the live-stream component to a higher-quality level.” Another successful photographyfocused YouTube channel is from New York photographer and director David Joshua Ford. “I’ve always enjoyed the ‘go live’ sensation,” he says, “everything synthesising at a specific point in time. Most of my client work has been in photojournalism, portraits and headshots, and for video it’s been in commercials and brand anthems. Live streams for brands became more frequent over the past decade as internet video capability grew. “Then, the pandemic accelerated the adoption of live streaming dramatically.

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IN ASSOCIATION WITH AFFINITY PHOTO | TECHNIQUE

David Joshua Ford believes photographers are well placed to get involved in streaming.

The initial months of lockdown saw the acceptable ‘professional’ video quality drop to the level of a crunchy Zoom call – at that time, any connection was considered better than no connection, as companies scrambled to adjust. This accelerated the adoption of apps and services (Riverside, OpenReel) that utilise consumer devices, such as phones and laptops. The result is that, as consumers of media, we are naturalised to productions acquired by a hybrid of high-end and low-end means. “With the influx of Zoom meetings and live-streaming events, I was initially wary that the creative elements of conceptualising and finessing a production would be replaced by point-and-shoot event coverage. I no longer see this side of things as competition, but rather a continuation of the vertical and additional value we can offer our clients: we can produce high-quality creative content as before, and also help them deliver this to a live audience.” David believes that a career in

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photography can serve as a perfect legup to one in streaming. “Photographers certainly have a head start in the streaming space over people unfamiliar with the medium. The lighting, framing and picture quality will signal to your audience that they are in the hands of a professional. Many cameras these days will even allow a USB webcam connection direct from the camera, without the need for a specialised HDMI-to-USB webcam device (such a CamLink4K). Add a decent external microphone to that, and you have a basic streaming setup. “When you start bolting on lower thirds, graphics, video playback, chat on screen, picture-in-picture, remote guests, multiple platform destinations… you’ll quickly see that

Blackmagic ATEM Mini Pro

streaming is a ‘how long is a piece of string?’ exercise. However, the important thing to remember is to keep your content forefront in your mind. Start simple and don’t allow yourself to be overwhelmed by the gear. Focus your energy on the unique perspective you have to share.” Another who’s looking at the value streaming is adding to his business is travel photographer and filmmaker Joe Allam. Joe used the period of enforced lockdown as an opportunity to step up what was already an interest in streaming opportunities, and he’s now heavily involved and very much exploring its commercial potential via his YouTube channel and regular slot hosting Adobe Live for the UK. “It’s something I’ve been keen to do for a long time,” he says, “but a few things always seemed to get in the way of making as seamless a production as possible. But I’ve now made some clever automations and I think I’ve created what could be the highestquality single-operator live stream setup ever, and it’s all really evolved ›

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TECHNIQUE | STREAMING BASICS from a single purchase of the Blackmagic ATEM Mini Pro. From there, I’ve run wild on the idea of doing all sorts of little things with the setup and it’s worked really well.” Joe is working with two cameras, both of which will be familiar to professional photographers. One is the Panasonic GH5, paired with a Sigma Art 35mm f/1.4, which he uses at around an arm’s length away to get perfectly proportioned head shots, while the wide aperture creates an attractive bokeh just behind him. This takes away some of the detail, which not only looks better but also saves on some of the bandwidth being used. The second camera, a Panasonic GH5S fitted with a Lumix/Leica 12-60mm f/2.8,

Zoom PodTrak P8

There are also low-cost solutions for those working with a smartphone setup in the “form of the Am7 Android microphone and the iQ7 IOS microphone, both of which will massively improve the quality of the audio you’ll be able to record in your stream. ” is not strictly necessary, but Joe has found that it elevates the quality tremendously, and saves the issue of viewer fatigue if they’re looking at a live event where the point of view never changes. If photographers ever needed any incentive to take a closer look at what streaming can add to their business, then it’s worth hearing from Joe how it’s impacted on his own setup. “Streaming has actually accounted for over 70% of my revenue for the last 12 months,” he says. “It’s been an investment that’s not only been enjoyable to tinker and experiment with, but it’s one that’s truly paid off financially as well.”

Zoom Am7

You need to decide if you want video recording or video playback. Are you going to re-purpose the event in some other fashion, for example, so will you need recordings from all your cameras? STREAMING GEAR “With the advent of software In effect, starting a streaming like OBS, which is very popular business is like building a in the live-streaming world, television studio. Much of Mat you can use your regular PC or Recardo’s role at CVP involves Mac with, at the very least, your gauging what his clients webcam to live stream with a actually need for their streaming reasonable amount of polish. Then projects and then guiding them to there’s specialised hardware such as the optimal selections. the Blackmagic Design ATEM series, “You can live stream for free on Datavideo and NewTek’s Tricaster: your phone if you want,” he says, these products will enable huge “but multi-camera is the big leaps forward in terms of addition and step up that Rotolight’s Video Conferencing production value.” many people need. You Kit is ideal for live streaming. Joe Allam’s experience can then have guests, shows that you can work real or virtual, and very successfully with highly affordable that goes a long way to giving you cameras that you might already be using something engaging. in your business, and likewise much of the “Think what a three-hour music equipment that you’re likely to require for festival might be like from a single camera a streaming setup can serve a dual purpose shot: it’s going to be like watching CCTV.

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in your still photography operation. Manufacturers know this and some produce dedicated kits that are very much tailored towards the streaming market. Zoom, for example, is heavily invested in products that are targeting podcasters, but these are equally well suited to the streaming community. The PodTrak P4 and P8, for example, are awesomely wellspecified pieces of kit that are designed to bring the control of the studio to those working on modest budgets: the highly portable P8, for example, which offers six microphone inputs with low-noise microphone pre-amps, six headphone outputs and even the facility to wirelessly connect a smartphone, brings a huge degree of professionalism to a setup and yet costs just £550. Meanwhile, there are also low-cost solutions for those working with a smartphone setup in the form of the Zoom Am7 Android microphone and the iQ7 IOS microphone, both of which will massively improve the quality of the audio you’ll be able to record. It’s a demonstration of how cost-effective it can be to get involved in the streaming revolution at all kinds of levels. Lighting too is an essential, and Rotolight is one of the companies that has seen an opportunity to piece together a dedicated outfit aimed at the requirements of a modern audience, and once again it’s a highly cost-effective solution. The company’s Video Conferencing Kit, which features at its heart the powerful NEO II battery-operated LCD light and filter kit

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STREAMING BASICS | TECHNIQUE

PhotoJoseph pinpoints the introduction of the Blackmagic Mini as the exact moment streaming came of age.

plus a desktop light stand, costs around £250 and, as the name suggests, it was specifically aimed at those undertaking the likes of Zoom calls. However, it’s also a handy solution for those streaming, who are looking for a straightforward way of lighting either themselves or a guest. PhotoJoseph pinpoints Blackmagic’s late 2019 introduction of the ATEM Mini, the forerunner of the kit being used by Joe Allum, as the exact moment streaming came of age. “At that point, anyone who knows anything about what it takes to get a camera stream into a computer went ‘holy shit, this is amazing’ ”, he says. “This is a $300 piece of hardware that used to cost thousands. That then made it possible to get multiple cameras into their computer and to switch between them.

“Then, within a few months, they released the enhanced ATEM Mini Pro, which offered a built-in encoder for live streaming and that took things further.” David Joshua Ford has this advice for the beginner: “You can start streaming directly with your existing laptop and/or phone,” he suggests. “Go where your audience is. If you have a sizeable Instagram following, go live from your phone. Think about how you’ll move around to demonstrate a photography setup. Consider adding a gimbal and a lapel microphone and your quality will be boosted immediately. “If you’re going to YouTube, the ATEM Mini Pros are a good place to start, as you’ll be able to switch between four independent sources. Use any additional camera bodies you have for fresh

angles, or even the FiLMiC Pro app on a phone – particularly useful to easily rig a lightweight, top-down shot. You can also add a computer’s HDMI source for desktop demonstrations or video playback.” There’s no doubt that, from a totally fresh start, the learning curve involved with streaming is steep and complicated to navigate, but the market is here to stay for sure. David has the last word: “Streaming culture will continue even after the pandemic. The barrier to entry for a 1-4 camera setup has dropped, with devices and platforms such as the ATEM Mini Pro, Yolo Box, CamLink4K and Ecamm Live now available. Technology such as 5G will improve bandwidth for both streamer and viewer in remote locations, and this market is set to grow.” More Information: ❚ cvp.com/streaming_solutions ❚ photojoseph.com ❚ davidjoshuaford.com ❚ joeallam.co.uk

VIDEO Click here to view Joe Allam talking about how he’s now added streaming to his travel photography and YouTube businesses.

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ISSUE 185 PROFESSIONAL PHOTO | 59

Defying the Dust! If you’re a hard working pro, the last thing you want to be doing is spending valuable time in post-production removing dust spots from your files, so here’s how to clean up your act.

WORDS TERRY HOPE UST IS THE absolute enemy of the professional photographer, because it can make your postproduction a misery and waste tons of valuable time that could have been spent on much more profitable and productive activities. The problem is that those who make photography their profession are, by definition, going to be working their equipment hard and in all kinds of scenarios, and if you don’t have stringent policies in place to keep cleanliness at the heart of your operation, it’s inevitable that you’ll forever be plagued by troublesome spots on your files. “We’ve found that mirrorless models suffer from sensor contamination more than DSLRs,” says Anthony Sinfield, MD of CameraCal in West Sussex. “This is due to the fact that with mirrorless models, the contamination has nowhere to go but straight onto the sensor. “With DSLRs, contamination build up starts, and is initially trapped, in the mirror box, then over time it gets transferred to the shutter and then the sensor chamber itself. It doesn’t help that sensors in Sony and Nikon mirrorless models are physically closer to the lens mount and thus more exposed, while Canon uses a clever system where a mechanical shutter gate is closed when the camera is switched off, thus protecting the sensor. “There can also be an issue caused by oil/grease ‘splatter’,something that’s particularly associated with cameras such

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You can clean your own sensor, but it comes with the risk that you could cause damage.

as Canon’s 1D X series and the Nikon D600. They might have come off the production line with excess lubricant on the mirror shutter unit, which can result in oil/grease being sprayed over the sensor glass when the shutter is fired while you’re shooting in

Fixation uses the sensor-cleaning setting for all cameras, never cleaning on bulb.

high-speed continuous mode.” Fortunately, it’s a fairly straightforward process to clean a sensor, and you can purchase kits to enable the process to be carried out at home, while CameraCal even offers courses to help you learn the skills. However, as a pro, the chances are that you won’t have time and, in any case, you’ll be working with a high-end camera that cost a fortune and there are all kinds of things that can go wrong when you’re attempting a home clean, from scratches on the sensor itself to drying marks from using too much cleaner. Faced with this, many are choosing to send their kit to specialist outlets for cleaning, and these are inevitably set up to do a thorough job that’s tied into an ultrafast and secure delivery service. At CameraCal, for example, what’s ›

A filtered compressed air system is used by Fixation to remove lighter dust without risking contaminating the sensor.

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SENSOR CLEANING | TECHNIQUE offered is a mixture of in-depth cleaning carried out by experts, and the cost for this is £56 for a full-frame or medium-format sensor and £36 for a MFT or crop-sensor camera. A ‘while you wait’ service is available for personal callers who book in advance, while for those further afield a fully insured courier service is offered, starting at £17 for a pick up and return. Also on offer is a selection of products that can make the home-cleaning process far easier and safer, including clever inhouse-designed accessories known as dust collectors – sticky discs that can be fitted inside lens and body caps, which are available for £3.99 for a pack of ten – that can massively lessen the amount of dust that makes it onto your sensor.

FULL PRO SERVICE If you imagine that sending your precious pro kit off to be cleaned will involve it being out of your business for days on end and then just receiving a very basic service, it’s time to think again. The most reputable businesses that provide this service are totally aware of how precious a photographer’s tools of the trade might be, and they will have procedures in place to ensure a rapid turnaround, while the kit itself will undergo a really thorough cleaning ritual that will ensure it goes back to its owner pretty much as good as new. At Fixation, for example, the sensorcleaning service that’s offered alongside the company’s renowned camera-repair offering reflects how well attuned the business is to the specific requirements of the professional photographer. For a start, the outlets in London and Manchester will both allow photographers to drop off their kit and to wait while cleaning takes place on the spot if the need is really urgent – Nikon,

Lint-free tissue is used by Fixation for cleaning the sensor, and these are more precise than the big square swabs often utilised.

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CameraCal provides way more than just a basic sensor clean and can carry out the service while you wait.

FIGHTING THE DUST BOTH CANON (Dust Data Ref) and Nikon (Dust Off) provide a facility that can be hugely useful in helping professionals fight the dust. “This can help enormously if recontamination of the sensor occurs in the future,” says Anthony Sinfield, “and it’s one of the first things that should be carried out after unboxing. You create a clean reference shot that will at a later stage enable you to clone out multiple dust specks, using Canon’s DPP (Digital Professional Pro) or Nikon’s NX-D software to batch process your files.”

RIGHT: Dust Catcher sticky pads produced by CameraCal catch dust before it reaches the sensor.

Canon, Sony and Fujifilm cameras only for this service - while a one-day turnaround is also offered, and pretty much all camera makes are accepted. Likewise, Fixation offers a pack of low-tack discs to catch dust, and these are available at a price of £5 for a pack of ten, and they definitely help to cut down the risk of dust. Sensor cleaning for a fullframe model is £66 and the price is £36 for a crop-sensor camera, and the procedure that’s carried out is thorough. Test images are taken to establish the level and location

VIDEO Click to see a short film by CameraCal that explains the Clean Shot Process.

of dust, the mirror box area, including the underside of the focus screen, is cleaned, along with the sensor and the body cap and rear element area of any attached lens. Finally, further test images are shot and then magnified to 100% resolution to make entirely sure that the cleaning has been completely successful. Advice from Fixation is that the cleanliness of the sensor should be checked on a regular basis by taking an image of a clear background or blue sky, with the aperture stepped right down to increase depth of field, with the file then being checked at 100% on a monitor. Carry out this procedure before every important job or trip away and you’ll cut down on frustrating postproduction sessions down the line. More information: ❚ cameracal.co.uk ❚ fixationuk.com/sensor-cleaning

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BUSINESS

Go Big on

Brands

Could brand photography help you create a profitable and successful photography business? Gillian Devine explains why it’s her number one genre, for joy, ease and healthy profit.

WORDS & IMAGES GILLIAN DEVINE O TELL YOU that I’m passionate about brand photography is something of an understatement. This genre is the best in so many ways. It’s given me the perfect work-life balance, regular creative commissions from clients I adore and that adore me, and a super-profitable and successful photography business in a genre that’s not yet saturated. In this feature, I’m looking to cover what brand photography is, why it’s been the answer to my photography business prayers, what a shoot looks like and how to get started and, most importantly, how to be successful and profitable. First, let me briefly introduce myself. I’m a proud scouser who’s been a professional photographer for 15 years in a number of different genres, including weddings, events, families, babies, children, pets, boudoir and a touch of commercial. I’ve also been through all the ups and downs of running a photography business, working weekends, missing out on family time, editing late into the night, finding it hard to price myself for profit and finding an empty business account at the end of the month, despite feeling like I’ve worked all the hours that God sends. But brand photography has brought an end to all that. It’s given me a perfect work-life balance, coupled with creative and varied work for amazing business clients, high levels of profit and a joy and ease to the workflow that I'm finding is way better than at any other time in my entire photographic career. In this genre, I’ve found that my clients invest with ease, as it’s a business

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ABOVE: Gillian has discovered that brand photography is a viable, financially rewarding and thoroughly enjoyable way of making a living as a photographer. decision not the emotional one you'll inevitably encounter when you're working in family, baby and wedding photography. The midweek shoots and light editing give me back my valuable evenings and weekend time, and the digital delivery and the lack of a need for studio space offers me the highest level of profit I’ve ever experienced. This is also, as yet, an unsaturated genre, so it’s a chance for ambitious photographers to really build and establish themselves, to be a big fish in a small pond and the ‘go-to’ brand photographer in their area.

What is Brand Photography? Essentially, this genre is all about providing visual content for brands and businesses that are looking to market themselves, attract new clients and sell more of their stuff. The images I provide will be used across their social media, websites, email communications and throughout all of their marketing literature, giving a consistent look, feel and tone to the brand’s presence. The fact is that business owners need to showcase their brand, their business, their values and their personality, as well as their products and services. Entrepreneurs and business owners today are building brands, not just selling products and services. ›

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BUSINESS | BRAND PHOTOGRAPHY Consumers are essentially visual beings, making decisions based on what they see, so the images that a brand or business uses need to effectively convey to the audience that they are authorities in their industry and the recognised go-to person for their particular ‘thing’. Brand building is also about enabling the audience to judge whether this business could be their cup of tea. We can’t be liked by everyone, and that’s ok. Deflecting your non-ideal clients is as important as attracting those who are ideal for you when you’re trying to build a brand and business presence. Is this not just commercial photography under a different name, I hear you ask? Well, there is definitely an overlap, but to me brand photography usually involves working with smaller businesses and teams, even solo entrepreneurs, and telling the full story of their brand in imagery, not just factually picturing their products and services. It’s embracing the fact that the audience needs to grow, know, like and trust a company as part of the buying decision. To help potential customers make a buying decision, growing a relationship and connecting with that company is crucial, as is seeing the people behind the company, understanding the brand values and getting an insight into the personality and mission of that brand.

Who Needs this Service?

The exciting thing is that everyone who owns a business, or is trying to grow a personal or business brand, can use

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ABOVE: Gillian is loving the opportunity to work with clients who are looking for images that will showcase their personality and help build their particular brand. the services of someone who can help them spread the word about who they are. Think of it this way: there were over 835,000 new businesses registered over the past year, and that was during a pandemic! Pretty much every one of these is going to need visual content to market themselves, and this is where photographers come in. We can use our photographic skills to capture a bank of storytelling images, taking the audience on a journey to understand the business, the brand, their mission, their values, their personality and the people behind it all. Through our imagery, we can help the business to build relationships with potential clients, connect with the audience and to resonate with the right people. Here are a couple of examples to demonstrate this principle in practice. I had £50 to spend on a bouquet of flowers and asked for a couple of

recommendations for local florists. On perusing their social media accounts, I discovered that florist number one was sharing images of beautiful flowers, while florist number two not only had these but there were also images of the florist herself, working in her shop, shopping for blooms at the flower market and dealing with her clients. I could see an image of her outside her shop, with books researching flowers and arrangements and then with her family and dogs. This beautiful bank of images has enabled me to go further down the know, like and trust journey, and I can see that she’s passionate about what she does, is caring with her clients and has an amazing talent. I can see her with her family and I connect and resonate with that too, and I can also see the front of her shop so I know exactly where to go and what the shop looks like, and I can also see the behind-the-scenes images that show her personality and values, laughing over a coffee with her assistant, smiling over her flower books and having banter with the flower market stall holders she's working alongside. So, where do you think I spent my money? I also watched as my husband pondered on two websites, deciding where to go to have a custom motorbike built. Both sites were full of beautiful bike images, but one was showcasing more behind-the-scenes imagery. Photographs of happy owners with their bikes and the build team designing the bike, sketching out designs, the bikes being carefully and lovingly built by the team and then the excitement as owners arrived to collect the final build. The passion and client care of this company was obvious, and I watched my husband’s eyes light up as he could visualise himself taking that exact same journey, briefing the company and build team, arriving at the company to oversee parts of the build and then the day itself, collecting the final bike. Once again, you can guess where he ended up putting his business. My photography is helping other businesses grow, get more visibility and attract more clients. It’s saving them time as they no longer have to scrabble around looking for images to post, which invariably will be badly taken selfies or generic stock images. It’s helping them feel more confident in their marketing and visual presence, proud of their website and social accounts and excited

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BRAND PHOTOGRAPHY | BUSINESS

“I now run a very profitable and successful, as well as joyful and easy, brand photography business. I regularly turn over £6.5k in a month, with my average sale per client at £1,695 for a three-hour mid-week shoot.” about their marketing literature. And, above all else, it’s making them money, attracting more of the right clients, getting them noticed above their competition and helping them to grow their business in the way they want. Now tell me that’s not a great genre to get into!

Breaking In

So, how do you get started in the brand-building genre? It’s crucial not to procrastinate: we can feel like we aren’t ready, we don’t have enough experience, we don’t have enough skin in the game. We can question our worth and the quality of our images. But the fact is that you know how to use your camera and you should be confident by now of being able to take a good-quality, saleable image. Then get cracking! If you want to get involved in brand photography then simply give it a go. I was a full-time newborn specialist when I started off my brand photography business, and I had no previous experience in this area. I bit the bullet and

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did a couple of social media posts, making an announcement that I was moving into brand photography and offering an initial no-brainer deal to encourage the first few bookings to arrive. It took off and grew rapidly from there, but if I had waited until I felt ready, I would probably have still have been waiting today. I now run a very profitable and successful, as well as joyful and easy, brand photography business. I regularly turn over £6.5k in a month, with my average sale per client at £1,695 for a three-hour mid-week shoot. I would love this feature to inspire and motivate you to explore brand photography as an option for you in your business. It’s honestly been a complete game changer for me, and I would love it to be for you too. You really can create the business of your dreams. You have your kit, your skill and your natural talent. Dedicate a little time and energy and you too could be changing your business for the better, and moving into creating profit and lasting success.

Gillian Devine Gillian is a brand photography expert and photographer business coach and mentor. When she isn’t gadding about all over Europe for her photography clients, she’s hosting training events and mentoring her photography students on how to build profitable and successful businesses. She has recently been voted Photographers’ Trainer of the Year by The Societies and is a number one best-selling author in three business categories.

More information: ❚ gilliandevine.com/challenge If you fancy taking a closer look at a full gallery of one of my shoots, knowing exactly how I structure my prices and how I market to get clients, then you can learn even more at my free five-day online training course for photographers, The Business of Brand Photography.

ISSUE 185 PROFESSIONAL PHOTO | 67

LISA DEVLIN

Lights, Camera, Action!

Even if you’re focused solely on stills, there’s still much to learn from a cinematic approach to your wedding photography, and this month Lisa is sharing six tips that can help you on your way.

ANY WEDDING photographers now refer to themselves as storytellers or say that they are cinematic wedding photographers. It’s one thing saying it and another entirely to apply some of the techniques of narrativebased cinematography intentionally and consistently to your work. This month, I’ve got six tips to share that you can use to consciously shoot and present your work, with influence from the cinema.

liked the realism it brings to the process due to its lack of distortion. Neil most often uses his 35mm or, more recently, his 28mm, which adds a cinematic emphasis to images. He also maintains the same aperture on this lens throughout the day, again for consistency. The images shot on this camera could be considered to be your B-roll – supplementary shots that support or reiterate your main images.

1. Story

In many moody films, mixed lighting, usually an amalgamation of warm and cool sources, is used to create interest. For us, this could involve mixing daylight with tungsten which, for example, could be window light with a lamp. Although to the eye there isn’t so much of a difference, to the camera the colours will register at very different ends of the colour-temperature chart. Assess your scenes for what light is available and don’t forget that you can also add some extra into the mix with your flashgun. I often carry a stash of coloured gels for my flash, which can alter the colour to either clash or match with what is already there.

Shoot with the story in mind. There is always a story and it’s often your role as the wedding photographer to record and relay it. You choose the frames and the moments and then you edit them into a final selection. So, intentionally shoot with the story uppermost in your mind. Many films will open with an establishing shot, whose job is to convey the setting for a story: essentially, it’s a wide shot that reveals the surroundings and sets the tone and context. Where is this story taking place and how are you going to inform us about this in a frame? Throughout a film, wide shots are used multiple times to reset the scene. So, as you move through the new scenes of a wedding, include fresh establishing shots as you go along to keep those looking through up to speed. Next up might be full-body shots, which include more of the action and more detail about the characters. Finally, there are close-ups and extreme close-ups. This is when the emotion in a story can be revealed more. Using a mixture of these shots adds greatly to the visual interest in your story and the images can work together to deliver a detailed narrative tapestry.

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3. Mixed Lighting

2. Continuity Having great continuity allows your viewer to concentrate more on the story, as they are less distracted by unnecessary factors. To achieve this in photography, carefully frame your shots so that they only contain relevant elements. You might need to move objects or reposition yourself to do this, but it allows the focus to be on your subject more. One method that Scottish wedding photographer Neil Thomas Douglas uses to create a consistent result is to leave one lens on one of his cameras for an entire wedding. He considers this to be his ‘storytelling’ lens. Keeping that same focal length throughout all your scenes is reassuring and familiar: Hitchcock’s preferred lens was always a 50mm, as he

4. Depth Photographs are in two dimensions, whereas cinema is in three. In our scenes, there is a flattening of the elements to consider. So, think about how the viewer’s eye will travel around your frame. You can use lines to draw the eye wherever you want, from left to right, front to back or vice versa. Deliberately place your points of maximum interest on lines, which can be physical or focal lines, with important parts on the same focal plane and therefore in the same line of focus.

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CINEMATIC WEDDINGS | LISA DEVLIN 5. Perspective

For impactful moments in film, the camera is often positioned to shoot the character’s view. It might be as if through their eyes or maybe shot over their shoulder. At a wedding, maybe it’s the view of a window they look out of, or the ceremony room seen from their perspective. You’ll often see multiple characters mirroring each other’s perspective and shot in this way. So, for instance, I will get a shot of the bride over the groom’s shoulder in a ceremony, and vice versa. At these highly emotive parts of a wedding, the couple can feel like it went by in a blur, so be the person that brings it back for them.

6. Details Shooting the details is something you probably already do, but could you be thinking about them more as a cinematographer? Look at drawing emphasis to an object that may become more significant later. A great example of this is in the movie Misery: the camera zooms into a small ceramic penguin that later in the film plays a significant role. Another rule that Hitchcock loved is that an object’s size in the frame should correlate to its significance. So yes, maybe you take a close-up of the rings or a shot of the dress hanging up, but how can you inject more narrative into the scene? For me, I do shoot the objects on their own but I also shoot them being interacted with by the couple. The more expected shot might be a wedding dress hanging up but I always prefer a shot of the bride handling it before she puts it on. Yes, I will take a shot of the confetti in its containers but I prefer the shot of it scattered about the couple’s feet. These moments to me are more ‘mise-en-scene’. The beautiful thing about being a wedding photographer is that you extract the story and present it in a way that you control. It’s a privilege to be trusted to do this for someone. Photography tends to be more linear than film-making. To document something, we start at the beginning and finish at the end, and indeed this is how most of us present our galleries and our blog posts. By contrast, film-makers will play with a timeline in order to prioritise the story and to evoke emotional responses. Many films begin with the end and then

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“Assess your scenes for what light is available and don’t forget that you can also add some extra into the mix with your flashgun. I often carry a stash of coloured gels for my flash, which can alter the colour to either clash or match with what is already there.”

reveal how the story got to that point. I’m not sure how we can utilise similar methods in our photography, but it’s something we could certainly have fun exploring. I’d highly recommend looking at the work of wedding photography duo The Kitcheners (thekitcheners.co.uk) for inspiration on how to utilise cinematic storytelling to an incredibly high standard.

More information: ❚ photographyfarm.co.uk ❚ @devlinphotos ❚ @photographyfarm

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BUSINESS

Time to

TURN

PRO

Plan for the Future

If you’re setting up a photographic business from scratch or are carrying out an annual review, then you need a solid business plan in place to ensure your venture has a firm foundation. WORDS LUCY NEWSON NYONE WHO IS advising you on how to set up a business from scratch will always tell you that pretty much the very first step you need to take is to put together a viable business plan. This is your blueprint for your upcoming venture, the foundation upon which your entire new business will be built, and it’s a crucial part of the overall process. It will outline your objectives, strategies, sales, marketing and financial forecasts, and it should also spell out how you’re intending to achieve these goals. Essentially, it’s a roadmap for success, and each plan will be bespoke to a particular business. And don’t go thinking that it’s something you do just once and then never revisit either, since it should be a fluid document that will change as you grow and circumstances evolve. Even established businesses will find they can benefit from regularly looking at where they happen to be at any set time and checking whether they’re still happy with the route map they’ve set out. A good business plan will carry many benefits, both internally for your business, and in helping you to thrive externally when looking for support.

your strategies in detail, and to then be able to measure and compare your progress in the future.

External Benefits ❚ A good business plan will demonstrate you have a strong knowledge and understanding of the fundamentals of

your photography business.

❚ It will be an essential document if you wish to contact a bank for a loan, or an organisation for a grant. ❚ New collaborators or business partners you want to work with will also want to see that you have a good handle on the fundamentals of your setup.

Internal Benefits

Creating your Business Plan

❚ It encourages you to set goals – both

YOU SHOULD WRITE your business plan using plain language. Anyone should be able to read through and understand what your business offers, how it operates and how you plan to succeed. While you need to be covering your entire business, it doesn’t mean that the descriptions need to be lengthy: banks and potential business partners tend to prefer documents that are concise and to the point, with summaries highlighting the key information. However, you still need to be covering all of the main sections listed here, and they’re all equally important.

short and long term – and to anticipate where your business is going.

❚ It will help to clarify your business idea(s) and set your priorities.

❚ It’s a great way to highlight potential pain points or problems.

›

❚ It will give you the opportunity to plan PROFESSIONALPHOTO.ONLINE

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BUSINESS | TIME TO TURN PRO

Executive Summary

PRO TIP

THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY, as the name suggests, is a condensed overview of your plan, and it should run to no more than a single page. Be sure to highlight all your key points in here, including your set goals and outcomes, and to focus in on the bigger picture.

ALTHOUGH THE EXECUTIVE Summary is at the beginning of your business plan, save writing it until the end, as it will be easier to summarise your plan once you’ve written it all down.

Business Description THIS SECTION SHOULD state the following factual details: ❚ Company name. ❚ Business structure: e.g. sole trader. ❚ The key people behind your business, including yourself and any high-level

PRO TIP YOU NEED TO explain everything – even the things you believe should be obvious – as the person reading might not have understanding of the specific industry you’re in.

employees you might work with.

❚ Your location – this could be your studio, home office or the areas you cover when on location. ❚ A brief history of your business and its progression to date. Explain your product/service and the products you offer, for example albums and frames. It’s important that you list them all, and the ones you aspire to in the near future as well. Also include the benefits of what you’re offering to your customers, alongside the pricing of each service/product.

Target Market A TARGET MARKET is defined as a particular group of consumers at which a product or service is aimed. In this section, you should describe the customer who might purchase from you in detail. Some ideas of things that should be included in here are: ❚ How old are they? ❚ Gender? ❚ What do they do for a living, and what income bracket are they in? ❚ What is their lifestyle like? What are their hobbies and interests? ❚ Have they previously purchased the product/service from a competitor? ❚ Why will they buy from you that they could not source from anyone else? ❚ What will they value the most from the product you've supplied them with? You can also highlight any concerns your target market could potentially have with your product/service, and explain the solutions you have in place.

Competition/Market Long and Short-Term Goals IN THIS SECTION, briefly share what you wish to achieve, both in the short term – 3-11 months – and the longer term – 12+ months. It's a good idea to bullet point your goals, since this will make it

easier for the reader to quickly sieve through this information. Within the following sections in your business plan, you’ll be discussing these goals in greater detail, and outlining how you plan to reach them.

YOU MUST SHOW that you’ve researched the market and know about the competition you’re up against. To do this, you can outline your main competitors and highlight how you’ll stand out from them, and you can also cover how you’ll position yourself in the market, your pricing and expected customer demand. This section works well as a comparison table.

Marketing Strategies MARKETING STRATEGIES ARE plans of action describing how you’ll reach and sell to your target market. You should list all of the marketing avenues you’re currently using/wish to introduce in the short term. These could include such things as online portfolios, websites, email marketing campaigns, social media, trade shows, word of mouth and business literature if that's appropriate. Make sure that you describe each marketing strategy in detail, and ensure that these are properly costed out within your cashflow forecast.

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TIME TO TURN PRO | BUSINESS

Operation Strategies PRO TIP THESE ARE THE ways in which you will run your business on a day-today basis. It needs to be detailed, so include in here such things as the suppliers you’ll use, the equipment you envisage working with, software you’ll utilise, the premises you’ll be working out of, your car if you’re using one for the business, insurance

WHEN WRITING THIS section, break your process into bitesized chunks and analyse what operations are needed. and professional indemnity details, methods of payment and full details of any employees you might have.

How Often Should You Review? A BUSINESS PLAN is a living document, which needs to follow your business’ journey. With this in mind, you should look to review your business plan at least once a year, if not more often. Maybe your goals have changed or the services you offer have expanded, or you might have new suppliers. By reviewing like this, it also gives you time to assess your progress: did you reach your short/long term goals? Have you been distracted by a new venture and need to refocus on where your business is going?

PRO TIP TAKE THE TIME to make your plan look professional – include a cover page, choose a professional font, check for spelling errors and include graphs and tables. Also make it easy to read – include a contents page at the front of the document for easy navigation, and summaries of key points.

Extra Resources

Financial Strategy and Forecasts WHEN APPLYING FOR a bank loan or grant, this section will be one of the first to be read. If you are just starting up, these will need to be based on accurate and realistic predictions. If, on the other hand, you’ve been established for a while, then you can include data from previous years to accurately predict future projections. Overall, you need to have a complete breakdown of your business’ finances, which should include: ❚ Your costs – work out how much each service/product costs, plus your operation costs, for example petrol, bills and rent, and then outline your profit margin. Include both your variable costs, for example packaging, and fixed costs e.g. rent. ❚ Sales forecast – show how many sales you’re aiming to achieve in the

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coming year and how much money you’ll receive, and include whether you believe purchases from your customers might be seasonal.

❚ Cost forecast – using your costs and sales forecasts, calculate how much money you will be spending if you make those sales. ❚ Cashflow forecast – detail how much money is expected to come in and out of your business. ❚ Profit and loss forecast. ❚ Your break-even point – the amount of revenue you’ll need to cover all fixed and variable costs throughout a specified time period.

❚ Current investments. ❚ Current business assets, for example cameras and lenses etc.

❚ Future business assets that you might be looking to invest in.

❚ gov.uk/write-business-plan ❚ princes-trust.org.uk/help-foryoung-people/tools-resources/ business-tools/business-plans ❚ barclays.co.uk/content/ dam/documents/business/ business-insight/ guidetowritingbusinessplan.pdf

Lucy Newson Lucy Newson LBIPP is an award-winning rural lifestyle photographer based in Essex, with private commissions across the UK. Capturing the everyday magic for those living in the countryside, she creates treasured ‘family heirlooms in-waiting’ for her clients through the selection of albums and artwork for their walls that she offers. ❚ lucynewsonphotography.co.uk ❚ info@lucynewsonphotography.co.uk ❚ @lucynewsonphotography

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PRO ACADEMY

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PRO

Show Us Your Skills!

Welcome to Pro Academy in association with the Nikon School. We’re offering you the chance to show off your skills in a number of genres and to earn our certificate of excellence.

ASSIGNMENT ONE:

FOOD PHOTOGRAPHY F YOU’RE AN aspiring or working professional photographer, you don’t need us to tell you that there’s a continual need to learn and hone your skills, and you should never close your eyes to the value of trying out new things or stepping out of your comfort zone to tackle a genre you might not be totally familiar with. Welcome then to an opportunity to do just that, and to sample our brand-new Pro Academy, which we’re running in tandem with the excellent Nikon School. Over the next six months, we’ll be setting Professional Photo readers six challenges to see what you can do, and you’re cordially invited to enter just one or to go the whole hog and take part in all six. We’re inviting you to send across your best shot from the assignment to our expert team at Professional Photo and, if you’ve met the required standard, we’ll send you back an e-certificate to prove the fact. Successfully complete all six assignments and you’ll receive a further e-certificate to confirm that you really are an excellent all-round operator! It’s not a competition and there are no prizes to be won, but you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that your skills have been recognised and it’s a chance to test yourself by tackling some fresh genres.

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THE

PRO ACADEMY OF PHOTOGRAPHY SKILLS IN ASSOCIATION WITH ASSIGNMENT ONE:

FOOD PHOTOGRAPHY This is to certify that

SKILLS

AWARD

Your Name Here

has reached the standard required to pass the Pro Academy: Food Photography assignment set by Professional Photo and the Nikon School, https://nikonschool.co.uk

Terry Hope

Terry Hope Editor, Professional Photo

How to Take Part You don’t need to be a professional photographer or a Nikon user to take part in Pro Academy, and don’t feel shy about sending in the best shot you've been able to achieve, even if it’s perhaps not up to the high standards of the work from Donna that you can see here. It’s all about learning and rest assured we will be making allowances for newbies! Head to the Professional Photo

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PRO ACADEMY | TIME TO TURN PRO

TIPS TOP

Challenge Number One: Food Photography

FROM THE

WE WANT TO see your best single shot related to food, which could be an impeccable still life, a shot of a tempting dish styled up on a plate or even something that's just food-related, such as a scene in a bustling food market. The choice is yours, but we’re looking for proof of your skills, so be sure to stretch yourself, resist the urge to raid your files, see what our experts have to say and then go and take a picture specially for the challenge.

Meet The Pro Team PROFESSIONAL PHOTO: Matty Graham Matty is an accomplished all-round photographer and videographer, who’s never been slow to take on a challenge. He’ll be looking through all of the submissions and making the call regarding who will have earned that cherished e-certificate.

NIKON SCHOOL: Training Manager Neil Freeman Neil is one of the most highly respected trainers around, and each month he’ll be handing out sound technical advice regarding how you might meet the particular challenge that’s been set.

Technical Tips with Neil Freeman

TIPS TOP

“THINK ABOUT THE look you want FROM THE to achieve,” Neil says, “and this will help determine your lens choice. For example, a fast zoom enables you to be flexible with your composition, and if you work with a wide aperture you’ll be able to soften the background. “When you’re working with a shallow depth of field, however, you need to make sure focusing is spot on. With a camera such as the Nikon D850 you can go into Live View and set Pinpoint AF, which enables the lens to be focused tightly on the intended focus point. Models such as the D850, D780, and the Z 6 and Z 7 Series also offer Focus Peaking, where you set the lens to manual focus and choose Peaking level in the i-button menu. The camera fires a burst of shots at slightly different focusing points, which are merged in post to create a shot with an extended depth of field.”

LEARN WITH THE NIKON SCHOOL WITH MANY OF its courses now online, training via the Nikon School really is open to everyone, with a wide range of well-priced learning available to photographers at all levels and using any brand of equipment – although Nikon users will get particular value from the content.

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SOUTH AFRICAN-BORN Donna Crous is the Nikon Northern Europe Ambassador for Food Photography, and she loves the challenges that the job invariably presents her with. “As a food and still life photographer, you’re in complete control of the entire image,” she explains. “There are no opportunities that you need to wait for, such as a flock of birds or a sunset to create a great image. Because of this, I suggest learning to develop an eye for strong composition. Spend time reading food magazines and cookery books, and find and follow photographers whose style resonates

Head to the Nikon School website to take a look at what’s on offer and to see what you could sign up for, with everything from lighting technique through to running a digital darkroom, mastering a particular piece of Nikon gear, filmmaking and even one-to-one tuition all available, along with location courses and experience days being offered in the UK and overseas. ❚ nikonschool.co.uk

Preparation and styling of food is a crucial element of the photographic process, and everything needs to be picture perfect, down to the tiniest of details. with you. By studying food images, analysing the placement of dishes, extra props, backgrounds and, most importantly, light, you’ll be able to develop a better understanding of what goes into creating a wellcomposed food image. “Everything starts in the shops, and finding fresh ingredients that have good colour and shape is key. The colour of the food will strongly determine the styling element: if it’s

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Donna Crous – Food Specialist Each month, we’ll feature a top professional from the genre we’re covering to get some idea about what they find so compelling about their chosen speciality. can look great when they've been shot straight on, while flat items like pizza will work best from overhead. Meanwhile, anything that has visual appeal from both the side and top is great from a three-quarter viewpoint. “When photographing prepared food, there are little tricks to make it glow and look delicious, such as brushing meat with a mixture of olive oil and gravy browning, adding fresh ingredients like herbs or berries to brown food, spritzing fresh produce with a mixture of glycerine and water for a fresh dewy look or using an upside-down ramekin in a soup bowl to ensure that heavier ingredients don’t fall to the bottom and out of sight.”

"By studying food images, analysing the placement of dishes, extra props, backgrounds and, most importantly, light, you’ll be able to develop a better understanding of what goes into creating a well-composed food image." full of bright hues, perhaps being a dish such as an heirloom tomato salad, then less styling will be required, because the dish speaks for itself. If, however, it doesn’t have much natural colour, like a stew, then bringing in brighter eyecatching elements such as a coloured textured background, bowls, props and a sprinkle of bright green chopped herbs will really help to draw attention to the

dish being pictured. “The angle that the subject is shot from is also key. Study the subject and decide whether an overhead or flatlay, three-quarter or straight-on angle works best. It’s important to really have a good look and to play around to see which position best shows off the visual element. For example, layered dishes, such as burgers or sandwiches,

Camera Gear

VIDEO Join Donna Crous and Aurelie Gonin as they explore food photography with favourite Nikon gear.

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In her studio, Donna switches between a Nikon Z 6II, Z 7II and D850, while lens choice ranges between a 50mm f/1.8, 85mm f/1.8 or a 105mm f/2.8 macro, depending on how wide or how much storytelling she’s looking to include. If shooting in a restaurant where lens changing is kept to a minimum, Donna often works with a 24-70mm f/2.8.

❚ donnacrous.com

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BUSINESS

A Day in the Life…

Time to

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Fine Art Photographer PRO

If you’re dreaming of selling personal work to collectors then read on, as Jo Scott explains what life is like for the fine art photographer and how it can complement commercial output. WORDS & IMAGES JO SCOTT

O YOU HAVE to make a conscious decision to either be a commercial photographer or one who focuses on fine art? The answer to that is a firm no, because, for me at least, fine art photography is a mindset, rather than something that’s separate to anything else I do. I pick up on the beauty in everything, noticing the small details that are often overlooked or ignored, and my images are very much an expression of what I see. As a natural light and location specialist, I create images with connection, beauty and clarity in every aspect of my work, whether that might be personal fine art, family portraits or corporate photography. How I first got into fine art photography is a bit of a long story. About ten years ago, I went on a writing retreat to south-west France for a couple of days with the intention of doing photography rather than writing, simply to have some thinking and creative time away from my business and my young family. We stayed in a dilapidated ancient town house and I can’t explain how inspired I was by the crumbling building. Bizarrely, I started writing as well as photographing how it made me feel, and I created a whole series of images that ‘spoke’ to me of the building. It was a total surprise and very enjoyable. By coincidence, I had set up a meeting on my return with my mentor, Kevin Wilson, to explore how I might move towards a Fellowship at the BIPP. I had expected the discussion to be around portraiture, as I had my Associateship in that genre, but it quickly became clear that I wanted to immerse myself in creating fine art photography. With this in mind, I set out to locate dilapidated buildings that I could photograph. When I found Victoria Baths

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in Manchester, I knew this was the place and, after researching Victorian-era swimming pools, I ended up with a series of writings, drawings and images of this location, which made up my Fellowship submission in Fine Art to the BIPP. It was a real turning point in my career. Not only had I achieved the highest accolade I could from that body, but at the same time I had discovered a passion for fine art photography that continues to inspire me and inform my commercial work as well. Everything I do is rooted in this genre. Clients will see the artistic influence, even in the most commercial of my photographs, and it’s the creativity of thought that goes into my imagemaking that sets me apart from other

"When I found Victoria Baths in Manchester, I knew this was the place and, after researching Victorian-era swimming pools, I ended up with a series of writings, drawings and images of this location, which made up my Fellowship submission in Fine Art to the BIPP."

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IN ASSOCIATION WITH MPB commercial photographers. It’s now really important to me that I set time aside for personal projects. Deciding what the theme will actually be is fluid, in that I don’t have a list of subjects, but go with what inspires me at the time. I try to take on one every year: my latest involved taking a ‘photo a day’ in lockdown from day one. It was highly spontaneous and was all about expressing my feelings through photography. The year before was ‘Angels and Urchins’,which explored feelings about my own childhood, and I’ve been working on one about artists for about six years! This is finally coming to fruition at the moment in the form of a book. In terms of a typical day, I would say that it’s hard for me to be specific because, as I’ve mentioned, fine art infuses everything I do. Some commercial clients commission me specifically because of my approach to photography and they give me creative freedom around what I produce. For example, it might be that I have a product range to photograph and, in these circumstances, I will develop a theme for the photography that’s on brand for them. I might then go about creating further little sets for each product that sit with the theme but these will be individual to that particular item and will add something extra.

Creative Thoughts

If I’m progressing a personal fine art project, time on a typical day might be spent working on the creative thought process in advance of the shoot date. On the day itself, I might have to arrange for models to be in certain locations, sort out the clothes I want them to wear and then spend the allotted time creating images, at which point I’m in the visually creative zone. In terms of kit, I use the same for both personal and commercial projects: a Canon 5D MkIV and a 50mm prime or 70200mm zoom, and sometimes an iPhone. The big difference is that personal projects take place over a period of time, when I can fit them in, whereas paid work is done to a specific timescale. I see the fact that I’m a fine art photographer as part of my make-up and my fine art pieces, whether they are books or prints, support my values and my brand. So, I don’t currently market or promote the projects in a conventional way. I did produce and sell books and prints of my Victoria Baths Fellowship

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TIME TO TURN PRO | BUSINESS project, which went to homes as far away as Japan, and I’m just completing a book on my artists’ project, with the one after that featuring my lockdown ‘photo a day’ set. The value of such things to me is intangible: they show potential clients who I am and what makes me tick. My prints are showcased on my website and promoted through social media as well I haven’t yet had an exhibition of my fine art, although it's something I often think about. The cost and time you need to expend can be prohibitive, unless there’s a specific desired outcome. All the prints I sell are on archival fine art paper and I outsource them to a master printer who I trust to produce the highest of quality. Most are signed limited editions and can be purchased framed or unframed, and it’s just another way of putting myself out there.

More information: ❚ joscottimages.co.uk

MPB Used Kit List If you’re shooting fine art images then almost anything goes, but it’s good to have some resolution under the bonnet. MPB’s used kit expert Marc Read suggests three alternative kits. Fujifilm X-T3 (Excellent, £839) + Fujifilm XF 90mm f/2 R LM WR (Excellent, £614)

Make the switch and keep yourself updated with the latest mirrorless technology. The Fujifilm X-T3 is user-friendly, lightweight and beautiful too. The image quality is also especially impressive, and comes with very good noise and dynamic range performance. Pick out details with the Fujifilm XF 90mm f/2: this lens is especially well suited to a variety of shooting applications, most notably portraiture.

Sony A7R II (Excellent, £1,069) + Sony FE 85mm f/1.4 GM (Like New, £1,199)

The Sony A7R II features the world’s first back-illuminated full-frame 42.4MP Exmor R CMOS sensor, which delivers high resolution and high sensitivity. The camera also includes a five-axis image stabilisation system and can shoot and record 4K video in multiple formats, including Super 35mm and full-frame format, a world-first for digital cameras. Meanwhile, pairing a bright aperture with a short-telephoto focal length, the Sony FE 85mm f/1.4 GM lens is ideally suited for portraiture and other situations where focus control is paramount for the photographer.

Nikon D810 (Good, £859) + Sigma 24mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art (Like New, £514)

The Nikon D810 DSLR offers outstanding picture quality in a well-built camera. The impressive full-frame 36MP sensor allows you to capture every scene in complete clarity, and to print to a large scale, which could be a big selling point for fine art photographers looking to offer collectors the option of big prints. A great partner for this camera is the Sigma 24mm f/1.4 DG HSM, a wide and fast Nikon F-Mount prime that's a member of the highly regarded Sigma Art line. This high-quality lens is characterised by its advanced optical construction and robust physical design, and it's capable of doing full justice to the resolution that this pro-spec camera can provide.

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TESTED

Panasonic Lumix GH5 II The hugely respected Panasonic Lumix GH5 has had a makeover, and the Mark II version takes its predecessor’s features up a significant notch and adds live streaming into the mix. WORDS & IMAGES ADAM DUCKWORTH

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PANASONIC LUMIX GH5 II | TESTED

The on-board contrast detection AF of the GH5 II is better than ever but still not as good as rivals.

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TESTED | PANASONIC LUMIX GH5 II

SPECIFICATIONS Panasonic Lumix GH5 II PRICE: £1,499 body only SENSOR: 20.33MP MFT CMOS sensor PHOTO FORMAT: JPEG, Raw. 6K Photo, 4K Photo. PHOTO FRAME RATES: 12fps AFS/MF, 9fps AFC

The top plate of the new Panasonic GH5 II is easy to work your way around, especially if you have previously worked with the GH5.

sensor from a Sony or Sigma mirrorless camera, especially when light levels drop. But then again, you might be surprised at how good the images actually are, especially below ISO 3200, which, if you’re being honest, is going to be where the vast majority of professional photos will end up being taken.

Shooting Action The camera can rattle through images at 12fps if you stick to manual focus or single-shot AF, but, disappointingly, this drops to 9fps if you want Continuous AF. And, of course, shooting fast frame rates with any mirrorless camera that doesn’t have a stacked sensor for completely live, blackout-free viewing is never going to be ideal for fast-moving subjects. Only a handful of high-end Sony cameras, plus the forthcoming Canon EOS R3 and Nikon Z 9, have this feature at present. For video, the disadvantage of the

quality of the “4KThe footage that’s outputted, especially in 10-bit and 4:2:0 or 4:2:2, is stunningly detailed and colourful. It makes you wonder if video Raw is needed at all. ” smaller sensor is even less obvious. And actually, you’ll find that a smaller sensor is faster to read out and so is far better at controlling rolling shutter, which is virtually non-existent on the GH5 II. The quality of the 4K footage, especially in 10-bit and 4:2:0 or 4:2:2, is stunningly detailed and colourful. It makes you wonder if video Raw is needed at all, especially with all the added memory

The GH5 II can rattle through images at 12fps in manual focus, but this drops to 9fps with AF.

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VIDEO FORMATS: C4K/4K 4096x2160, 24/ 25/30p @ 400Mbps in 4:2:2 10-bit All-Intra, 4:2:0 8-bit and 4:2:2 10-bit Long GOP. 60p @ 200Mbps 4:2:0 10-bit Long GOP. Anamorphic 6K and 4K. FAST AND SLOW FRAME RATES: 4K 60fps, 1080p 180fps-2fps STREAMING: RTMP/RTMPS protocol. HD 29.97/59.94p RECORDING MEDIA: Dual SDHC/SDXC slots CONNECTIONS: USB 3.2, HDMI, headphone port, mic input jack ISO: Auto, 200-25,600, expandable 100-25,600 IMAGE STABILISATION: five-axis hybrid image stabiliser, 6.5 stops SCREEN: 3in LCD articulating touch screen, 1,840k dots SHUTTER SPEED: 60secs-1/16,000sec AUTOFOCUS: Contrast AF, 225 focus points DIMENSIONS (WXHXD): 139x98x87mm WEIGHT: 727g

power, computing power and extra processing input it needs. For colours, the standard and neutral options are bright and not too oversaturated. The new Cinelike D2 and Cinelike V2 options offer a flatter image than standard. The D2 prioritises dynamic range so needs a bit of post-production, while the V2 gives a filmic-like look straight out of camera. There are lots of other options for video and stills colour, but these are really aimed more at consumers looking for an easy ‘creative’ option. For maximum dynamic range, the V-Log L is not the newer extended 13-stop version as found in some of the pricier Panasonic cameras but the 12-stop version, so footage matches the older GH5. The GH5 II can record HD up to 180fps for super slow-motion, but this is available in manual focus only and at 4:2:0 8-bit, which does affect image sharpness. But

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PANASONIC LUMIX GH5 II | TESTED

V-Log L

V-Log L Graded The new GH5 II comes with V-Log already installed and the flat contrast and low colour saturation is perfect for editing. The tilting viewing screen provided on the GH5 II is a really useful feature, but the version on the GH5 II is now slightly smaller.

it’s a nice feature that can really add to the production value of your videos. The camera body has a new rear screen that’s shrunk from 3.2in to 3in, but it offers higher resolution than its predecessor and it’s brighter. The menus are easy to use and understand, there is now a red outline around the rear screen when recording and you can shoot upright video for social media. There are also dual zebra patterns and a luminance spot meter. The image stabilisation system was already amazing on the GH5 and now it’s even better. If you use it with Panasonic IS lenses, it gives up to 6.5 stops of VR. It’s simply stunning, and is great for handheld

use in stills or video. If all these upgrades haven’t swung it for you, then for some there is a brand-new feature that is really stunning, which serves to make the camera ideal for the growing brand of ‘content creators’, and that’s the camera’s new live-streaming capability. Live streaming to Facebook Live, YouTube and other platforms

The image stabilising system on the new camera is improved from the GH5.

is simplicity itself if you’re using your smartphone camera and audio. But with a professional camera, it’s fiddlier, requiring capture cards, a laptop with WiFi connection, streaming hardware and software, plus an understanding of the technology. But with the free Lumix Sync App on any iOS or Android smartphone, you can live stream directly from the camera via your phone to all the major services, no computer needed. It’s what content creators need, and it means a professional could add single-camera live streaming to clients on location, as long as there is a decent mobile phone signal. But even if you’re not into streaming, then the GH5 II is an impressive all-round camera that can shoot great photos, record stunning video and won’t break the bank. More information: ❚ panasonic.com

VERDICT IF YOU WANT the best MFT camera on the market for photo and video use right now, the Panasonic Lumix GH5 II is it. Compared to the GH5, the battery lasts longer, the video spec has been improved, there is no time limit on recording and it’s great at live streaming. The autofocus is as good as it gets on a Panasonic as well. On the downside, it still has the same 20MP

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sensor that’s been around for four years. Another consideration is that, if you can wait until the end of the year, Panasonic has revealed it will launch the 5.7K GH6 at around $2,500. No UK price or final specs have been set, but what is known is that the incoming camera is designed to be the new flagship. Shared so far is the fact that the GH6 will come with a new, higher-resolution

sensor and processor, recording 4:2:2 10-bit 4K/60p video internally with no recording limit. It will also feature 10-bit 4K 120p recording for super slow-motion video. However, until that arrives, the GH5 II is unquestionably the best all-round MFT camera. And after the GH6 hits the market, the GH5 II will remain as a more affordable option that still comes with the ability to pack a mighty punch.

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TESTED

BenQ SW271C Monitor Designed to meet the needs of those working across both stills and motion, BenQ’s SW271C monitor delivers nearperfect colour and a host of features aimed at the high-end professional. WORDS MIKE JENNINGS HILE BENQ’s latest SW271C hybrid monitor might be carrying a somewhat hefty £1,299 price tag, in its defence it’s making a ton of promises that can perhaps go some way towards justifying the required investment. These include near-perfect colour accuracy, AdobeRGB gamut ability, hardware calibration and plenty of professional certification. And there’s no denying that the SW271C does indeed come with a superb specification. The 27in IPS display has a 4K resolution that delivers a crisp 163ppi density level, so photographs and apps are guaranteed to be pin-sharp. Meanwhile, the underlying panel serves up a 16-bit 3D LUT that’s marginally better than the 14bit table used in the BenQ SW271. BenQ’s display also delivers the goods in benchmark tests. Tests carried out revealed that the BenQ displayed 100% of the sRGB and 98.7% of the Adobe RGB gamut, alongside a 92% coverage level in the DCI-P3 space. That’s high enough to

Colour adjustments are easy to make on the SW271C monitor.

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enable colour-sensitive workloads in all of those areas. The maximum Delta E of 1.34 is fantastic and ensures that colours are consistently accurate, and the colour temperature and Gamma levels of 6,540K and 2.19 are virtually perfect. The panel’s backlight strength only deviated by a maximum of 7%, so this panel has superb uniformity alongside no backlight bleed. Its default brightness level of 190cd/m2 is fine for everyday office use, while the backlight level of 0.2cd/m2 results in a contrast measurement of 950:1. That’s not overwhelming perhaps, but it’s ideal for delivering realistic tones that don’t become oversaturated. This is, in short, a very good display. It’s got the colour accuracy, contrast and gamut ability to handle colour-sensitive tasks in those key colour spaces. For mainstream photography and video workloads it’s great, and you’ll only get more accuracy and colour ability if you spend loads of extra cash. This impressive colour accuracy is bolstered further still

The Hotkey Puck controller, with three customisable buttons and dial.

by Pantone and CalMan certification, and BenQ’s AQColor technology is designed to ensure accuracy and standardisation with ICO and ICC standards.

High-spec Panel

While this specification should be good enough to sate the expectations of the majority of photographers and videographers, and the increasing numbers of hybrid operators who have a foot in both camps, the SW271C isn’t infallible, and the praise does arrive with a couple of caveats. Take its colour reproduction, for example: while this display does have 10-bit colour, it’s delivered by an 8-bit system with Frame Rate Control, or FRC. That’s not a BenQ issue: it’s common on all displays at this price point, and you’ll have to spend far more to get a true 10-bit

On the side, there are two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports and an SDXC card reader.

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BENQ SW271C MONITOR | TESTED

SPECIFICATIONS BenQ SW271C Monitor PANEL TYPE: IPS DISPLAY SIZE: 27in RESOLUTION: 3,840 x 2,160 REFRESH RATE: 60Hz RESPONSE TIME: 5ms

a welcome feature. Bear in mind, however, that these more affordable devices must still use BenQ’s Palette Master Element software to handle the calibration, rather than the apps provided by the companies themselves. You can only use third-party calibration software from companies like CalMan, and that software is often far more expensive and favoured by video professionals rather than photographers. That’s a minor niggle, though, especially when you can still use BenQ’s app to

ASPECT RATIO: 16:9 PIXEL DENSITY: 163ppi COLOUR SUPPORT: 10-bit PEAK BRIGHTNESS: 300cd/m2 DISPLAY INPUTS: 1 x DisplayPort 1.4, 2 x HDMI 2.0 OTHER PORTS: 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1, 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C/DisplayPort/power, SDXC card reader, headphone jack SPEAKERS: n/a WEBCAM: n/a ADJUSTMENT: 150mm height, 90° swivel, 90° pivot, 25° tilt, VESA 100mm DIMENSIONS: 647 x 285 x 619mm (WxDxH) WEIGHT: 12kg WARRANTY: 3yr RTB

panel with the rest of these features. Also bear in mind that an 8-bit FRC display will still serve up the 1.07 billion colours required for 10-bit work, so you won’t notice the difference in daily use. Also bear in mind that this panel has a peak brightness of 300cd/m2, which is fine for SDR use but not good enough for proper HDR tasks – and the edge-lit backlight isn’t good enough to deliver the nuance required by HDR content, either. The BenQ’s gamut ability means that you can open, check and preview HDR content, and this display does support HDR10 and HLG, but it’s not good enough to render it with the kind of extra punch and vibrancy it’s supposed to deliver. This is another area where you’ll have to invest more if you want a real punch from your HDR workloads. BenQ’s display pairs its excellent performance with plenty of practical features. It has hardware calibration, for example, so you can use devices from companies such as X-Rite and Datacolor to perfect the panel’s output. These are popular companies with creatives, so this is

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The monitor is height adjustable and also comes with a built-in carrying handle.

calibrate this display to your own needs. The practicality continues throughout. The BenQ’s on-screen menu is fast and sensibly organised, and it’s managed using a row of solid and satisfying buttons on the front of the display. That’s not the only navigation option either: BenQ includes an updated version of its Hotkey Puck controller, which has three customisable buttons and a neat dial. It can switch between colour spaces and adjust the brightness, contrast and volume of your system, and it slots into a neat cavity on the stand. Handily, the BenQ’s extensive picturein-picture and picture-by-picture options support different colour spaces, so you can have one portion of the display using sRGB

and another using Adobe RGB – potentially very useful for more complex tasks. There are some good physical features, too. The BenQ has a generous 150mm of height adjustment alongside tilt, swivel and pivot movement, so it’s feasible to work in portrait mode. It’s also compatible with 100mm VESA mounting. Build quality is impressive, with robust material used throughout. The display also has a carry handle and a cable-routing cavity. Around the rear you’ll find two HDMI ports, a DisplayPort connection and a USB-C port that handles data transfer, DisplayPort imagery and 60W of power delivery. A more generous power level would have been better for running a wider range of laptops, but that’s still enough juice to run this display from plenty of portables via a single cable. On the side, there are also two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports and an SDXC card reader, which is useful for image work. BenQ rounds out the physical features with a shading hood, which is useful and very easy to fit. Physically, however, it’s not all good news. The BenQ is not an attractive display: it has huge, ugly bezels, an unnecessarily big base and no ornamentation. Its 12kg weight is also on the hefty side for a 27in display, if you’re being picky. More information: ❚ benq.eu

VERDICT THE BENQ PHOTOVUE SW271C replaces the SW271, and the newer display makes some notable improvements: its image quality is marginally better, and it also has more USB power delivery and wider DCI-P3 gamut coverage. It comes with great sRGB and Adobe RGB image quality, and this excellent core performance is bolstered by loads of adjustment options, some neat practical features, and some welcome pro-level additions. Underneath it all, you get a crisp 4K IPS display and plenty of professional certification. Conversely, though, the BenQ doesn’t have true 10-bit colour, it’s not bright

enough to properly handle HDR workloads and it’s big, somewhat bulky and not especially good-looking. Of course, plenty of people won’t be bothered at all by those issues, and you’re only going to solve those problems by spending loads more cash on a true highend, pro-level screen. The SW271C is more of a mainstream pro display, and it’s easily got the quality and accuracy to tackle demanding photography and video tasks in the sRGB and Adobe RGB colour spaces. If you’re a photo or video professional who needs high quality without the top-level pricing, then there’s no doubt that the BenQ is more than capable of delivering.

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A Hybrid Powerhouse

The SW271C Monitor from BenQ is not just a formidably highspec piece of editing kit, it’s also designed for those, such as Ross Grieve, who are working with video as well as stills. HE WORLD OF professional photography has been undergoing a fundamental change over the past decade or so, as technology has moved on to the point where most higher-end professional cameras now deliver a set of video credentials just as strong as those for stills. Alongside, we’ve also been seeing video accessories such as continuous lighting and high-spec audio equipment becoming freely available, and when you hand a bunch of creative people a set of powerful tools such as this it’s no surprise to find that motion has become such a strong growth area in recent years. Those professionals who are exploring the potential of a hybrid approach also need to consider their editing options, of course, and alongside a powerful computer you also need to be looking at a fully-featured monitor that can deliver awesomely accurate colour, ease of use, including straightforward calibration, and the necessary heft to get the very most out of the high-quality 4K and above footage that contemporary cameras are capable of outputting these days. One of those who has been looking very closely at developing the video-production side of his business is Ross Grieve. As a hard-working street photographer, educator and wedding and portrait specialist, Ross is well used to a multi-faceted approach, and his natural

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Ross has discovered the images he edits on his SW271C monitor look exactly the same when made into prints.

curiosity has led him to take a considerable interest in the motion side of things, giving him a requirement for a monitor that could handle anything he might care to throw at it. As a longterm BenQ user, he already knew and respected the brand, and the arrival of the SW271C gave him a tool to use that is perfect for his range of postproduction requirements. “I’ve previously worked with the BenQ SW271,” says Ross, “but the new display has moved things on significantly and it’s perfect for me since I’m now starting to undertake more filmmaking in my business and am producing commercial projects for a host of major clients. This means that I need a monitor

with the ability to handle both stills and motion, rather than just stills, as was previously the case.” For Ross, the beauty of the SW271C is not only the fact that its hybrid credentials mean that it copes so beautifully with both still and motion disciplines, but it’s also been designed from the ground up to be straightforward to work with, with neat and simple shortcuts on board to ensure workflow is kept as efficient as possible. “I’m the type of guy that just pulls kit out of the box and then only reads the manual if necessary,” says Ross. “So, when something arrives, I initially just plug it in to see exactly what it can do. I found the SW271C very easy to set up, and it comes with out-of-the-box colour accuracy and a factory calibration report, meaning that it was good to go as soon as it arrived, although I did also carry out my own calibration, because that’s what I like to do. “Compared to a rival screen I use that was highly reflective, the screen on the

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While testing out the SW271C, Ross compares the high level of reflection that a rival screen offers by comparison.

BenQ is a delight to work with, and its matte surface handles reflections really well, even when there might be a bright light behind you. To improve things still further, it also comes with a non-reflective shading hood that absorbs the light and stops it bouncing around and creating problems. All the details are so well thought through: there’s even a little slot in the top of the hood so that you can drop through a calibration tool and it will still fit nice and flush to the screen. For me, it just feels like I’m working on a sheet of lustre or pearl paper; it really is that simple.”

Speeding Up Workflow Any professional will know how important it is to be able to work accurately and as efficiently as possible. One of the key benefits of the new SW271C is its assured handling of colour and the emphasis that BenQ has put on ease of calibration. “I’ve found the previews that the monitor is capable of generating are really helpful,” says Ross. “In particular, I love the concept of Paper Color Sync, which is a BenQ software that can show you an image on screen that can simulate the colour settings, printer and photo paper that’s in use, which all sounds really cool. “Overall, the SW271C has really helped to take the guesswork out of editing. There’s nothing more annoying than sending a print off and finding the colours

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The screen on the “BenQ is a delight to work with, and its matte surface handles reflections really well, even when there might be a bright light behind you. ” are out or the tones are wrong due to an inaccurate screen. So, now I can edit both video and stills with confidence, knowing that the colours and the final results will be spot on because they will look exactly as they did on my screen at the editing stage. “Meanwhile, the separate and upgraded Hotkey Puck G2 device that comes with the monitor is great for creating preset shortcuts and also looking at different colour profiles at the touch of a button. You can also adjust the brightness, contrast and volume of the monitor through the Hotkey Puck, and it’s just so easy to use.” Further benefits that help the hybrid operator to zip through their postproduction workload as quickly as possible include the ability to work with HDR material, since the SW271C is compatible with both HDR10 and HLG formats. It’s also possible to preview the HDR effect of

video content during the editing process to ensure the best results. “This is an awesome capability,” confirms Ross, “and I can also vouch for the fact that it makes my Xbox games look great!” For Ross, there’s no going back and, as the imaging industry gears up to become yet more multi-faceted, the need for kit that can truly handle all formats will continue to grow. The best operations will also look for ways to speed things up without losing their edge, and colour consistency will be a key element of this. “If you’re sending stuff off to labs and you’re getting results back where you’re thinking that the colour’s not quite right, then perhaps it’s time you started to get more serious about calibration,” says Ross. “For me, the difference is huge: as someone who hasn’t always used highend monitors, I can vouch for the fact that when you do get one, you’ll notice the difference straight away and it will just make your work so much easier.” More information: ❚ rossgrieve.com ❚ colorconfidence.com and other retailers

VIDEO Click to see Ross Grieve’s review of the new BenQ SW271C monitor.

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“ THINGS I WISH I'D KNOWN ”

Peter Dazeley Despite a tough school career, Dazeley went on to become an established professional photographer, thanks to the help of mentors and a determination to create opportunities.

WENT TO Holland Park, the first purpose-built comprehensive school in London, now amusingly known as the Socialist Eton. It also featured a darkroom and studio and it was there that I encountered a great photographic tutor called Ron Smith, who saw something in this failing, dyslexic boy. He was my guiding light in a difficult school experience, an inspiration for making photography my career. In 1976, he was awarded the RPS’s Hood Medal and he was still teaching into his 90s. I was struggling at school. My dyslexia had not been diagnosed, and I was just the dumb kid in the remedial stream. Over the Easter holidays, I saw an ad for an assistant photographer at an advertising studio at the bottom of Fleet Street. I went along with my mum for an interview, got the job and ended up never going back to school. There, through working as his assistant, I was introduced to the wonderful world and skills of advertising photography by Peter Sowerby. Based in a large studio using tungsten and flashlights and shooting using a 10x8in Sinar camera and a 6x6cm Hasselblad, I had now been thrust into a working life that involved meeting art directors and designers, looking after clients and models and arranging model castings. Looking back, I can see what a wonderful way to learn this was. I was surrounded by skilled craftspeople, such as stylists, set builders, modelmakers, hair and makeup artists and home economists, and it taught me to appreciate the talent and the added value they all brought to shoots. I picked up so much there, which turned me into a meticulous planner and imaginative problem solver. Another thing I learned that has stayed with me was the fun of collaboration with great art directors. I would often be working on a shoot

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PETER DAZELEY Peter Dazeley BEM FRPS, better known as plain Dazeley, is a London-born awardwinning fine art and advertising photographer and writer. Recognised in the Queen’s 2017 New Year’s Honour’s List for services to photography and charity, he’s also a life member of the AOP and, in 2013, he was awarded a Fellowship from the RPS, their highest distinction, in recognition of his original work and outstanding ability.

and thinking, 'I’m not sure about this picture, it looks a bit odd to me'. Then, in a month or so, I’d see the finished ad and go 'wow': I’d been taken somewhere creatively I would never have gone on my own. This helped my career immensely, because it enabled me to go on and win international creative awards, which was brilliant, and it taught me to respect the insight offered by other respected creatives. Another thing I’ve learned over the years is the importance of personal work. For me, this has been an ongoing journey of discovery that’s seen me experimenting with such things as anamorphic lenses, solarisation, mammograms, X-rays and limited focus, as I hunt around for things that I

find are visually stimulating. In recent years, I’ve also moved into producing books. I absolutely loved blagging my way into Downing Street, The Old Bailey and 46 London theatres for my three successful books, Unseen London, London Uncovered and London Theatres with Sir Mark Rylance. My Covid-delayed fourth book is due out this autumn. Over the years, I’ve also learned to always have a camera with me. One of my favourite pictures is of my son being born by caesarean and, on the basis that if you don’t ask you don’t get, I enquired of the surgeon if I could take a picture. He duly lowered the screen for a second and I got two frames of my son’s first breath. This was completely unplanned and absolutely wonderful. I’ve also learned through experience the importance of making things happen. Decide who you want to work with and then blag. Don’t sit on your backside waiting for the phone to ring: always go the extra mile and be a problem solver, not the problem.

❚ peterdazeley.com ❚ dazeleyfineart.com PROFESSIONALPHOTO.ONLINE