A look at 2015

It flew by. 12 months. In no time.

As 2015 winds down, I am posting a look back at my year. Ironically, with more work photography, I had less time to shoot for myself this year. I hope to swing the balance more toward the personal side in 2016, including a lot more MF film photography. In the meantime, I’ll spare you most of the work photography because, well, it’s work.

Reviews

A lot has happened on the camera and lens development side for Fujifilm and I had the opportunity to use a number of new products this past year. While my X-T1 and X-E2 have remained the workhorses of my work photography, I did review a few lenses and cameras. The XF50-140mm f/2.8 lens has to be the highlight for me. I use it constantly for work and it has always produced great images under all circumstances. In fact, I was shooting an outdoor event last week with temperatures hovering around 3 degrees C., where my hands were visibly shaking. Image stabilization to the rescue; all the shots were sharp at 1/125 sec.

Have a read of some of the year’s reviews:

• XF50-140mm
• XF16-55mm
• X-T10
• X30
• Instax Mini 70

I’m looking forward to testing whatever new gear is available next year and writing reviews of a couple of lenses that I have used for work during the past few months.

Film

This past year I shot more film than I have in… forever. While I dabbled with a found Fujica 35-ML, I really enjoyed shooting medium format film. After a year of exploring with the Fuji GW690 III and a test of a Mamiya RZ67, I look forward to expanding my film shooting in 2016. More long exposures. More portraits. More fun!

 

Documentary

Another area that I would like to expand in my personal work is documentary photography. While much of my work photography has an element of observational documentation in it, the one true documentary project I tackled was the end of printing at Queen’s Printer.

A few posts this year did document life on the coast, something that is important to me personally and greatly informs my photography. Here is a look at Life on the Edge, Pt. 1 and Life on the Edge, Pt. 2.

Performance

Shooting theatrical performances is a real pleasure. Animated, engaged subjects, dramatically lit, can make for compelling photos. I had the pleasure to photograph the talented folks at Fear No Opera for a couple of performances as well as to work with them on promotional material. Toward the end of the year, I also photographed a performance for the Belfry Theatre, a company that produces consistently wonderful theatre, year in and year out.

Exploration

Sometimes on the street or in the garden or by the water’s edge, I explored the fringes of photographic sharpness and (certainly) mass appeal. No matter, these accounted for some of my favourite images of the year. Oh, and there’s a rant in there too.

Last word

Finally, I am reminded of one of my favourite photographic experiences of this past year. The wedding of Natalie and Michael, on one of the local Gulf Islands this past August. I haven’t had the opportunity to post any photos from their wedding yet, so I thought I would close with a few images from a really great day.

By the way, thanks for reading in 2015 and Happy New Year!