CAPTURE NEW HORIZONS

Yesterday afternoon Monza hosted the opening round of the Michelin Le Mans Cup and I was on the grid before the start of the race to shoot a few images of the teams and drivers during the build up to the two hour race. I used the Fujifilm GFX50S fitted with the GF32-64mm f4 lens to capture these images.  They were all shot with the aperture set at f4 to give the shallowest depth of field as possible. This is the perfect environment for the GFX, capturing some behind the scenes environmental portraits and the resulting medium format images stand out from the images produced on full frame or crop frame cameras. Today is round 2 of the European Le Mans Series and with 36 cars on the grid it should be a great race in the Italian sunshine at Monza. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY VISITING THE ADVERTISERS ON THIS PAGE By c...

As a pitlane / portrait camera the Fujifilm GFX50S continues to impress.  I decided to take it for a walk in the pitlane during the set up day for the 4 Hours of Monza weekend, which wil be round 2 of the 2017 European Le Mans Series this Sunday. All of the images were shot using the GF120mm f4 macro lens, which is a really useful portrait lens as well as a close focusing lens.  I still prefer the 110mm f2 lens I tried in Spa last weekend but the results from the 120mm don't disappoint. I will be shooting more images at Monza over the next few days, so check back for these and my initial conclusions on the new Fujifilm GFX50S. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY VISITING THE ADVERTISERS ON THIS PAGE By clicking on the adverts you are helping support this blog - thank you. ...

The cars lined up at the first corner - Fujifilm X-T2 + XF50-140mm f2.8 The FIA World Endurance Championship 2017 season is now underway after two days of track running at Monza in Italy for the Official Preseason Test, The Prologue. Part of the proceedings is to take two special images, one of the group of static cars showing the size of the 2017 grid and the second is the car to car racking shots.   Both of these official images were taken by fellow X Photographer John Rourke and I rigged a GoPro Hero 5 Session and GoPro Hero 5 Black to record a timelapse video of the proceedings for the official website of the FIA . The video above was of the group shot at the first corner at Monza.  Fujifilm X-T2 + XF16-55mm f2.8 The car to car tracking shots took place on Saturday lunchtime after the morning session was concluded and my job was to organise the cars at the end of the pitlane and brief the drivers on the procedures to follow.  Once John wa...

Isola dei Pescatori With the European Le Mans Series Official Test complete and the FIA World Endurance Championship pre season test, known as The Prologue, setting up on Friday at Monza, I had one day to take the opportunity to travel the 65 miles from Milan to Lake Maggiore to relax and take a few pictures. We have taken family holidays near Lake Garda and Lake Como and we love this region of Italy, so the opportunity to visit the second largest of the Italian lakes was too hard to resist. I decided to head to Stresa on the western side of the lake.  I parked the car and walked down the promenade to get a good view point of the small islands of Isola Bella and Isola Pescatori (Main Picture). A Visit to Lake Maggiore from Fuji X Adventure on Vimeo . Lake Maggiore - courtesy of www.visitstresa.com  After lunch I headed up the lake, following the shore road up to Ronco, which is just over the Swiss border.  I then back tracked down to Pallanza wher...

2016 also saw our first visit to the wonderful city of Venice.   This place is a photographers dream and I had two days to capture the essence of this ancient city on an X-Pro2 and two prime lenses (18mm f2 and 56mm f1.2). This shot is probably too 'picture postcard' but for me it sums up Venice in an instance.  It was taken on the Fujinon 18mm f2 lens. CLICK HERE for more on the blog 

A few weeks ago we visited Venice for the first time and the city lives up to it's reputation as a photographers paradise.  I had to be careful not to overdo it as this was a weekend for my wife and I to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary and to have a camera permanently glued to my face would've been the wrong thing to do. Check out the blogs on Venice HERE (Venice with two lenses) and HERE (Details of Venice) Now I have been a fan of the square format since I started photography and dreamed of owning a 6x6 Hasselblad medium format camera.  The square format is iconic in photographic circles (sorry about the pun!) and when I see an image that suits 1:1 format then I shoot it with that in mind.   While the X-Pro2 can shoot 1:1 format images I prefer to shoot the images 3:2 and then crop in post production as it gives me the flexibility that I wouldn't have if I shot it in camera.  That isn't to say I don't shoot 1:1 in camera, in the same way I ...