My photo post called “Faces of Joy” is about a portrait photo shoot of model Joy of Honnête Model agency.
Joy is a very versatile professional model and can do anything from high fashion to portraits and from glamour to editorials, swimwear, lingerie, you name it. She can even make a runway show one you will remember!
When working with her it came to mind that her name suits her very much.
I am not a gear geek.
As a photographer my aim is to make beautiful and outstanding pictures that meet, or rather exceed, my clients expectation.
The gear should be professional in quality of equipment and quality of pictures; but with that gear you should be able to make the photographs that you had in mind, not what the gear dictates you.
In other words, your gear is an extension of yourself, in a way; an extension that you can trust and operate blindly.
The photographer should make the pictures with the gear, not in spite of the gear or because of the gear.
Having shot Pentax analog cameras and later Nikon, I used only Nikon in the digital era.
Until a few years ago when I bought a smal travel camera, a Fujifilm X-E2s. What’s in a name…less letters and digits than Olympus seems to use, but still….
(by the way, about letters and digits, the digital Nikons were called D2, D3 and so on and later D810; they even have 4-digit ones, like D5000, but never double digits… No D25 or D30.. strange)
Working with the little Fujifilm triggered something; a feeling that I had in the early days and did not know I had lost: the joy of photography.
Pleasantly surprised by the joy of working with the X-E2s, and later with the X-T2 and X-Pro2, I found out that Fujifilm stands out when it comes to ergonomics, image quality, quality of the famous Fujinon lenses and the great film simulation for jpg’s.
The jpg’s straight out of camera are by far one of the best and the possibility to apply a look of various (analog) films is very nice.
One of those film simulations is Classic Chrome. For some it looks like the old Kodachrome pictures, but to me the blues and reds are too washed out to even come close to that look.
But, it is one of my favorite film simulations, because of the classic look it does have.
”Classic Chrome is unsuitable for portraits”, is often heard all over the internet and on various YouTube channels.
To me that is a trigger and an urge to test those opinions and prove them wrong ;) .
In the series of portraits with Joy (the model) I used the Classic Chrome film simulation.
(I used an X-Pro2 with a 56mm/F1,2; one 500Ws Bowens studios flash with a 150cm deep octa box)
So what do you think! Is Classic Chrome definitely not suitable for portraits or are these portraits ok (or rather, I hope, more than ok..)?
Please enjoy the portrait series of Joy (they are displayed in “work”) and leave a comment !