Samantha - Low Light Portraits

Light is something that photographers work with. I started as a sound engineer, which was the study, capture, release and manipulation of sound waves. I have always thought of photography in similar way, just the waves are a lot faster. Physics wasn't ever my strongest science subject, but it has followed me (or is it the other way around) since I started working for myself and passions became part of my livelihood.

For anyone who has ever taken a photo in a darkened space without flash. Trying to capture what our eyes see is the holy grail of optics and photography. Over the decades the technology has increased and made this much more of a reality. Some cameras can 'see' in almost total darkness. Quality is always affected but photographers have adapted to the challenge and creates regardless.

This shoot was interesting as we had a very small hotel room and either really awful overhead light or small sources like table lights. This was the first shoot I did with a Sony A7s camera which purportedly has the best lowlight ability of any digital camera on the market at the time of use. It was a challenge to use, totally different physically and it having an electronic viewfinder was a blessing and a curse. Basically I went to the deep-end on purpose but that is the joy of this kind of shoot. The shoot also combine my normal camera (Canon 5D MKIII) and Mamiya 645 MF with film back plus the A7s.

Lots of photographers call themselves either "a strobist" or a "natural light" photographer. It's like there is an exclusivity to each style. While I more fall into the strobist area overall, I don't identify by that term. I also don't identify by "natural light" either. I that a good photographer just works with light, regardless of the source. So being able to work with anything thrown at you is part of the amazing challenge of this work. I urge photographers to look outside of those terms, and work with anything or everything available to you. This doesn't mean you shouldn't have favourites. I certainly have my "go-to" ways of shooting, but I also know that it's a crutch and if I use the same techniques all the time, others become rusty.

Therefore, the "deep end" is something I will try to push myself into as much as possible. Low light photography with and without strobe was this challenge with a mix of cameras and film + digital.

Model: Samantha Mansfield
Location: Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia

Captured using Mamiya 645 Medium Format with Ilford Delta 3200 Pro film

Into The Wilds - Artistic Nudes (NSFW)

Model: Erin M

One very early Saturday morning Erin & I went on an adventure into the wilds of Tasmania. We had a mission to create some artistic nudes within the amazing wilderness of the island we live in. So we started at dawn and travelled, explored and shot until dusk.

There is something amazing about working within this environment. As someone that has lived in Tasmania most my life and explored a fair bit of it when I was younger, I really had forgotten what it was light to just get out into the forests.

Going Old-School

Mamiya ADF Medium Format camera with a film back. 3 rolls of 120 of varying types.

To continue learning, improving and finding my voice I have made a small experimental step into the world of film based photography. I am old enough to have used a 35mm film camera as a child (and teenager) until digital dominated and became the default way of working in the industry. At that point in my life I had no idea that I would pick up a camera professionally, I only used a film camera like 95% of the public, for happy snaps. I never learnt how to actually "use" a camera properly. Point and click, load in film, take it to the chemist to get processed.

Move forward 15+ years and I learnt how to use a camera in the way it was intended, but something was missing and I still need to find it.

My interest started again with film based photography because my editing was slowly looking at emulating some of the looks that you naturally get with film. This style is becoming really common in the digital world. Apps like Instagram have made it cool to emulate polaroid and other film cameras. The issue with this for me it's not really a look that was aesthetically complete. Note, I don't think there is anything wrong with throwing a filter on a digital image, I do it all the time.

Added to my interest with looking and watching the work from industry professionals that use medium and large format cameras to achieve a look that just isn't possible with a 35mm based camera. At a workshop run by Australian fashion photographer of the year (2014) Peter Coulson, I saw the range that a medium format camera could produce first hand. Peter allowed me to have a quick play with his camera and it was like getting behind a Ferrari. The issue is that these cameras are stupidly expensive ($50k anyone?). That being said, a non-digital version of these types of cameras are now quite common on Ebay. The trade in older cameras is actually really big but I never got around to purchasing a system as I didn't really know where to start.

In the last couple of months I got chatting to fellow photographer Ed Jones about his conversion back to film photography. As Ed lives in Wynard (about 2 hours from me) it took a while for both of us the be in the same place. Last week I was up his way for a job and real world interaction happened. One of the outcomes from this meeting was Ed lent me his Mamiya 645AFD medium format camera to try out. This made me stupidly excited but also nervous. Each roll has 16 frames on it, I cannot see what the exposures will look like for weeks (currently Christmas/New Years). Will I screw this up completely? Do I actually know what I am doing? Am I overthinking this?

So with camera in tow I did a shoot with my friend Jen. It took 2 hours for me to use 16 frames. I had to slow down. I had to use my external meter. I had to be sure before pressed the shutter release. I couldn't help but to look at the back of a camera that doesn't have a LCD screen. I have no idea if anything came out.

From this the realisation that I need to do more of this type of photography. Even if I don't publish anything, I need to do more. Why? Because I need to use it to build my confidence. I need to be able to take an image on any camera and "know" that I got it without looking at the LCD. I thought I was really confident before, I could shoot a theatre production (stupidly hard) and only look at the LCD every 30-50 frames and know I had something but that is still a crutch. Digital gives you ability to just shoot, space is cheap, it's easy to view instantly. I want to be able to pick up a camera, look at the light of the subject, do my setting and know that I got the shot regardless of using a digital or film based camera. No confidence LCD checking required. Chimping is a crutch that we all use, but I am determined to become a better photographer and use film for improvement as well as aesthetic creativity.

So while I want to use a film camera for the amazing look it provides (original objective), it has taught me something more valuable. How to slowdown and really think about what I am shooting and that, I feel, is something totally missing from anyone that picks up a digital camera and I didn't know I was missing it until last Monday night.

So what about the frames I have shot?

Well we will see if I totally screwed up after New Years. More experiments to come over the next couple of weeks.

Chunky sound!

A video posted by Bruce Moyle (@bmoyle) on Dec 12, 2014 at 9:39pm PST