My Final Talk at Photokina - Why I Shoot Fujifilm
You may have seen the press report recently, that implied that Photokina is no more, which is very sad. It was a large trade show in Cologne, Germany. I think it's been going for many, many, many years.
And I think essentially, the pandemic and various other factors have put pay to Photokina, which like I say, is very sad.
I had some very happy times there.
I've been three or four times and usually, I've been on the Fujifilm stand, doing talks for them. And occasionally, Photokina themselves will ask me to go and do something a little bit different.
So today I'm going to show you my last presentation that I gave at Photokina, which would have been September 2018, which would have been the last Photokina technically. And the presentation is all about weddings, documentary photography, family photography, how I use my Fujifilm cameras for that. It's about 25 minutes long, I think. If you wait till the end of the video, you knew it was coming; I will share a 10% discount code for anything on my Workshops website, Kevin Mullins Workshops. So that will include presets and online training, mentoring, one-to-ones, portfolio reviews, all of that kind of stuff. So you have to wait till the end, and I'll read out that code for you, a 10% discount.
The video presentation is below. Now, below that, I have put the entire text transcript for you. I know some of you may not have English as your first language so I hope that helps.
So here I am, Photokina 2018, I hope you enjoy it:
Full Transcript from my Photokina Talk
Good morning, everybody. Thank you very much for coming along. As he was kindly introducing, I am a documentary wedding photographer originally from Wales, I now live in England. And that means that I photograph weddings in a purely candid way. Rather than setting things up and staging stuff, it's as it happens on the day itself. So a little bit about me as a photographer first. I was, up until 2008 or something like that, around about... I had my 10th anniversary in August just gone, as a wedding photographer. So 10 years ago, up until that point, I wasn't a photographer of any kind and I was doing a big commute every day and traveling. And I read an interview on a train, a magazine article about another documentary wedding photographer and I decided to just take the plunge. I loved the style of pictures and went ahead with that.
And I think I've shot something like 400 weddings since, so hopefully it's worked out, that little trick. Now, you'll see there at the bottom, there's a quote. I don't know if you can see it on the screen, it says, "Photography for me is not looking, it's feeling. If you can't feel what you're looking at, then other people aren't going to feel that either." And that's by a conflict photographer called Don McCullin and that's really important for me especially because all of the pictures I take, both of my clients and actually of my own children, my own family, that's the critical thing. So as a photographer, my ambition is to spend more time taking the pictures and making the pictures than editing them and making them different on the computer. So every single image you're going to see today is as it was shot. Of course, there's tonal adjustments going on in the images but I don't edit.
So all of those images are actually candid and pure images. So of course, I am a Fujifilm X-Photographer. They call it X-Photographer. X-Photographer is the name of the ambassadors scheme, it doesn't mean that I used to shoot with Fujifilm cameras, I still shoot with Fujifilm cameras, they just call it X-Photographer. And this is one of the first pictures I took with the original X100, 2011 was the next here in fact. And it just gave me this incredible appetite for making pictures that I just didn't have with the DSLR systems. DSLR system was great but having this little tiny portable camera like this that was enabling me to make pictures that I was actually thinking yeah, you know what? These are proper emotional images. And the key thing, the difference was that I was shooting a wedding on a Saturday and then actually carrying on shooting, taking pictures of my own family, the stuff around me.
Rather than seeing the camera as just a tool for the job, I was picking it up and shooting with it as we went along. So now of course, I am a wedding photographer and it says there again, photographing weddings in a purely documentary approach has allowed me to record the embryonic stages of a new family. It's an incredible privilege and being able to use small, silent, discrete cameras is very critical to the way that I work. We'll see that image again in a while. Now, if you are a wedding photographer or photographer of any kind really, you'll know that the Holy Trinity if you like, of making a good picture is light composition and moment. If you can make a picture with good light, good composition and a good moment, then it's going to win awards, it's going to be stuck on walls and magazines, et cetera. Now of course, making a picture, especially when you're shooting candidly, that has good light, good composition and a good moment, that's the trick.
That's the tricky element of it. So we're at the mercy of the lights, where composition is our guidance if you like. But the moment is up to the things that are happening in front of you. So I often say to my wedding clients in fact, that I'm not a photographer, anybody can click that. What they're hiring me for is for what I see through the viewfinder and it's the same for everybody and that's why we're all different. That's why we all have different styles and different approaches. So this idea of making an image with light composition and moment is key. When I'm taking a picture, I'm always thinking of those three things, always thinking of those three things. Now of course, it's actually rare to get all of those three things in a candid manner but when it does work and you know it's happening, then it's great.
Now of course, I have to talk about the Fujifilm cameras that I use and one of the ways that I actually use my cameras these days, even if I'm shooting raw, is that I'll shoot in a black and white film simulation. And the reason for that is I can see the light better, I can see the shadows, I can see the definition of the way that the light is working. And the raw files will always be in color, JPEGs will be in black and white but it allows me to see in a different way, because in the viewfinder and on the LCD and the EVF, it's black and white. And so you can see that light much easier. It means that I don't end up having to do so much editing later on. So images like this for example, this is a image shot on the X-Pro2.
Now, this is actually a JPEG image that has been toned, warmed up slightly, it's spot metered. So this is the key thing again, being able to see the exposure in the viewfinder, it's critical. Now of course, you can do all of this with a optical viewfinder camera but when I find that I can see it in the viewfinder as it's live, through the live view, then I can see the image form. I can meter accordingly. So the way that I would typically take a shot like this is I would focus first, move the camera slightly, remeter and then recompose and take the picture. And then I don't need to do any work to it afterwards, it's all done and dusted, okay? Just a little tiny spot of light falling on them.
Similar image here and a lot of my work is black and white because I love black and white medium but this particular image is the case of understanding that actually light, even when it's really challenging, shooting as a natural light photographer, you can always work with it rather than work against it. The moment that I had an epiphany, that light is actually on my side. I don't need to ride exposure compensation all the time, I can actually just take a different approach to where the light is falling. So in this case of course, it's cropped, so you can't quite see the top or the bottom in fact. I can't position myself anywhere else. I can't position myself on the side of the window to work with the light falling from behind me. So in my mind, I'm thinking okay, let's make something different. Let's meter accordingly, use the spot metering, focus, meter use that light. The light is my friend, rather than my enemy. Now in the past, I may have thrown a flashlight on that or exposure compensation, really blown out the window. But being able to actually see through the viewfinder and understand what's happening, gives me a real benefit I think, in terms of making these pictures.
Okay. So we'll talk about the moment briefly. Now again, you'll see this picture a little later also. The moment is absolutely critical as a storytelling photographer I think, that when I look at this picture... This picture by the way, is from a wedding in France last year. The bride was Jewish, the groom was a Christian, so it's a mixed religion wedding. And the grandmother lived in France and that's why the wedding was in France. And so my senses are telling me that the grandmother is a very important part of this family, that's why they've gone all the way to France to get married. So I'm keeping an eye out, I'm understanding that, the dynamics, the relationships between people. And this is immediately after the ceremony and as the bride and the grandmother are approaching, I need to make a picture to record that moment.
But the absolutely most critical thing is that I don't destroy that moment. Now, if you look at the angle there, I'm actually shooting it from around about here. So I focused, brought the camera down, positioned myself. One, two, three shots, move away. Let that moment evolve, happen naturally, organic. Now, if I stood there with a camera to my eye, first of all, probably the grandmother would be, oh actually, let's have a nice picture, smile, et cetera. And if that moment never actually happens, just was wiped from existence because of me standing there with a camera in my hand, I'd be like man, that's just not good. That is the thing that I do not want to happen. So making these pictures, I still want to fill the frame. I still want to get in close. I still want to take these precious moments for them, capture these precious moments for them. But absolutely do not want to destroy them.
And so I'm not going to stand there and take 300 pictures, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click and then just take one at the end. Because that will upset the rhythm of that moment in time. Now of course, that's just the way I work. It doesn't mean that people who shoot a lot more images is wrong at all. It would be a terribly boring world if we were all the same. It's just for me personally, I have this ambition that when people... Remember that Don McCullin quote I showed you? When people look at those images and they want to see the emotion, they want to see the memories. It's really important to me that when people look at their wedding images, they see them from a guest side point of view, not from the photographer.
I don't want in 30, 40 years time, when they pick up their wedding album... I want them to look at pictures like this and think oh yeah, do you remember when we ran through the confetti and they threw rice and all of that stuff? Rather than oh yeah, do you remember when that little short Welsh photographer we had told everybody to throw stuff at us? Because that's what they would remember if it was all staged and planned. So for me, very much I want to take pictures from the guest point of view visually. So you can see here that I am right in the mix. I'm right in the mingle with them and you can see the confetti coming over my shoulder. But also, I don't want to be part of the organizing element of it, it has to happen naturally.
So to that end, when they open their wedding books, I don't put my name or anything on the wedding books because in 30 years time... When these people are showing these images to their children or their grandchildren's children, that's when it becomes history, that's when the heritage happens. Rather than having my logo and branding and everything all over the album, the pictures are the most important thing. Okay, so the Fujifilm X-T3, I have to talk about this, right? Was released a couple of weeks ago and it's a very, very, very fast camera. This is 111 frames, it's a very short little photo film from a wedding I took last week. Confetti run again, face detection, all of that stuff. It's unedited straight from the camera. So have a quick look at this.
And that actually presents me with a little bit of a problem because the X-T3, I'm used to using the rangefinder style, the X-Pro2, X100F, et cetera and yet the X-T3 has come along and it's just this machine, this incredible machine that allows us to do this stuff. Now, talking about the cameras and the reason why I carry on shooting with the Fujifilm system, is this idea and I've already mentioned it, seeing the light through the viewfinder. The JPEGs, all of those images were JPEGs. In fact, currently as we speak, the X-T3, there's no raw support for it from Adobe, I think it's coming in a couple of weeks. So the JPEGs. Shooting from the inside, it says there at the bottom. So this is the Fujifilm X70. Tiny little... If I compare it to my phone, it's nothing, right? So I'll use this at a wedding.
But I'll also use the GFX, the new 50R GFX, which is much bigger but actually gives a much more impactful image. But I have a combination of everything and so when I'm shooting weddings, a lot of the time I am using just these very tiny cameras right up close because I want to come across as a guest, I want people to just see me as another guest. Now, it's usually obvious that I am the professional photographer because I'm the only single bloke there with a couple of cameras round my neck. But other than that, I behave and act like a guest and do my best in that respect. So these are some recent images from the GFX, which is actually a medium format system. So some wedding pictures that we've taken recently.
Now, this image was taken at Cambridge University, St John's College. And it's beautiful, wide, dynamic range, high detailed image. So obviously it's a medium format, so you cannot get the understanding of the depth of the image visually here. And anybody who buys a medium format camera or anybody who's used a medium format camera will know that actually, digitally, it's just pixels, right? It's when they are printed, that is the key thing. Now, I have a day in the life type element to my business and it's prints only. You'll see some pictures of that in a minute. So when my clients see those prints, they can visually... And they're not people that are literate in terms of images, they just realize actually when they see the print, that it makes a big difference. So I'm a big believer in trying to print things. So being able to shoot using tilt screens and just touch screens, all of that stuff.
Now of course, nearly all of the modern cameras have that ability but being able to get in close, take the picture, move away, let that moment evolve without any kind of issues. This is the wedding we just saw actually, so this is from last week. On the dance floor, a medium format camera, handheld, flash on the top. I don't use flash very often, so it was almost a revelation to me also. You can see the XF there, 1/125th F8 ISO 1000. Now of course, Fujifilm also have another GFX camera, the GFX 50S. Which I had but I would never use it at a wedding like this because it was just big, it was just too big. Going on a dance floor like that and getting right in amongst people with a medium format camera that big, everybody would just run away.
But now, I have this capability with a much smaller camera and it's a really good feature. Okay, so I'm going to show you a full wedding, one of the pictures you've seen already. This was shot with the X-T2 and the X-Pro2. Two cameras, two lenses, a 23 mil lens and 56 mil lens. For those of you that are not aware of the APRC equivalents, that's 35 and 85 in full frame terms, which is how I always used to shoot with my DSLR, 35, 85. So you're going to see the start of the wedding, right the way through to the dancing.
So it was a bit of a strangely configured wedding but a nice wedding. So I'm just going to spend the last five minutes or so talking about the idea of storytelling from a family point of view because for me, like I said, family photography is where it all begins. So this is my kids, kitchen table, all of that stuff that you might remember as a child, like having arguments with your brothers and sisters, cleaning your teeth, having your shoelaces done up by your dad or your mum. Having those pictures when you're older, going to be really precious I think and so I'm forever taking pictures of just mundane stuff. Just the very, very simple things. They're not portraits, they're not staged, they're not set up. It's just the stuff that we will always remember as a family.
And more importantly, even stuff like this. So this is my little boy before bed, every night at half seven, he's tears and I'm like, "Albie, you know what? For the next 90 years, you've got to go to bed every night. Just get used to it." But things like that, it's a memory that we have, our family has that memory. And so even not necessarily images that are happy images but they're still important to curate those images. So one last photo film to show you and this was taken on a X100F camera and X-Pro2, so very small cameras. And I've been photographing this family for the last five years and this is the day that the younger sister or the older sister met her baby brother for the first time.
So telling a story like that, things like the clock, it's all about linking the sections and curating this whole day in the life type thing. And it's an incredible thing to be able to photograph something like that. But they're paying clients, that's a thing. But interestingly, the surgeon actually afterwards, said to me, "Did you actually take any pictures?" And of course, I was like, "Yeah, I did but little tiny camera." He was expecting somebody there with a... Click, click, click, type thing. So yeah, thanks very much, it's about the memories and the pictures, rather than the likes and the technology and internet and Facebook and all of that. Just make memories and make pictures and thank you very much.
Okay, so there you go, that was my presentation. My last presentation at Photokina 2018, especially for all of you who have emailed me and said can we see any of your presentations? Now, two things to note. I'm about to give you the 10% discount of my Workshops page and also, the next video, which will be this week and I promise it will be this week, will be of me editing a full wedding. So make sure you tune in, subscribe, all of that kind of stuff. If you want to see me go through an entire wedding edit, then it will be coming this week. The following video after that will be five things that I think are essential for me in my business right now. So five tools that I use to run my photography business. Could be perfect Christmas gifts for people. All right, thank you very much. Enjoy the rest of your day, your weekend. Be happy, be safe, everybody and I shall see you in the next video.
