All posts filed under: Photography

Pentax – Exhibitions, Cameras and the Future

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I was up in Tokyo last weekend to catch the end of the Love & Hope exhibition at the Pentax Forum, and to photograph the Hamaori-sai festival in Chigasaki. It was good to see the huge print of my image on the wall of the gallery, and then as a bonus find out that Pentax had also chosen it to promote the exhibition in a Tokyo newspaper. Had a good chat with the staff at the forum. They had the special edition Pentax 645D with a traditional laquerware body on sale at a mere 1,200,000 yen. (The perfect thing for the person who loves to collect cameras and then leave them in a hermetically sealed cabinet.) I also got to have a quick play with a preproduction version of the tiny, mirrorless Pentax Q camera. Not sure what I think of the Q. It is the world’s smallest camera with interchangeable lenses, but it will be interesting to see if it can compete with the likes of the Sony NEX-C3, the Olympus PEN or the …

Natsumi & J.P. Engagement Shoot

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The light painting course finished at around 1AM on the Sunday morning. 5 hours later I was back at the beach for an early morning engagement shoot with Natsumi and J.P. Natsumi and I had already chatted about the look she wanted for the photographs. It allowed us to make decisions on what they were going to wear and how I would shoot. I decided on using natural light with reflectors. The final images are all very similar to how they looked in camera. I had originally thought I would give the following images an Abercrombie style sepia tint in Photoshop, but the cool blues of the sky and ocean would have lost their magic. I also consciously kept the images bright, aiming to give them a certain freshness and vitality. Both Natsumi and J.P. were relaxed in front of the camera, and it wasn’t long until they had forgotten about posing and were just enjoying hanging out at the beach. All in all, a great shoot with a lovely couple. Congratulations to you both …

Tilt-Shift on Screen

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Several times over the last few months I’ve seen TV shows, movies and even advertisements that have been shot, at least in part with a tilt-shift lens. I presume this has something to do with the Canon 5D mark II revolution that brought a photographer’s wide range of high quality optics into the cinematographer’s playground. So what is a tilt-shift lens?  A lens that is able to  rotate the optics of the lens relative to the film / sensor plane (tilt) or  move the optics up or down relative to the film / sensor plane (shift). These “movements” are  usually done to control the plane of focus (tilt) or correct converging lines (shift). Landscape photographers might tilt a lens to increase the depth of field in the image ensuring front to back focus. Tilting the lens in the opposite direction creates an unusually narrow field of focus. This gives the effect of miniaturization.  It was used to shrink London for the recent BBC drama Sherlock, and  New York in the opening sequence for Gulliver’s Travels. …

Love & Hope – Pentax Forum Gallery II, Shinjuku, Tokyo

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A set of postcards just arrived at my house promoting the new exhibition at the Pentax Gallery. Nice to see my name on there in the bottom right, and just as impressive is that they have spelt Willson correctly with two ls. It may be difficult to see, but the small camera icon in the center reads “Camera GP Japan 2011 – Camera of The Year” which is fantastic news for Pentax. Last month the 645D won the Best Professional DSLR award from the Technical Image Press Association (TIPA). Not bad for a camera that most people thought would never get beyond the prototype stage. I hope to get to the exhibition, but most likely it will be for part III when the part I prints are put on display again along with some other images. I’m aiming for the long weekend of July 16/17/18 but will see what happens.