Documentation with the GFX50S

While my job most often requires lots of travel, a hurried schedule of event photography and unreasonably fast delivery of content (thank you social media?), occasionally I get to slow down and photograph something else entirely. In this case, I am documenting a process that hasn’t changed much in centuries.

Next door from my office, at the Royal BC Museum, brothers Tom and Perry LaFortune are carving a pole to be erected at the Ministry of Health building in Victoria. As my work scheduled permits, I have been visiting Tom and Perry regularly to document the carving process. The GFX 50S is my tool of choice, as I want the resulting photos to have the image quality, dynamic range and shallow depth of field that the 50S delivers. I also appreciate that I slow down when I am using the GFX. I have time to chat with Tom or Perry. To watch them work. Watch them interact with the public. The deliberate pace that I employ with the GFX is perfect for documenting a process that goes back centuries, before contact changed local indigenous culture irrevocably.

As part of my documentation of the pole carving process, I am also making prints for Tom and Perry, so that they have a record of their work. This is another reason that the GFX is a great tool for this job. The resulting prints are stunning.

NB: Photos captured with the Fujifilm GFX 50S medium format camera, fronted with a variety of Fujinon GF lenses. My Observational Documentation of the LaFortune brother’s carving will continue until the pole is complete and it stands in front of the Ministry.