Breaking down barriers. Profoto A1X
“Nothing can dim the light that shines from within.”
I’m so excited to be able to share these images and talk a bit about why we shot them. A HUGE thank you to Whitney + Hayden Prayter for modeling for us for this project! More information at the end, thanks for checking it out!
We set off with a pretty clear goal on this shoot. Break down my comfort zone. Profoto and Fujifilm have a kind of incredible relationship and after my time at Photo Plus Expo in NYC a few months ago with the Fujifilm team I had the opportunity to get to know a few people from the Profoto team and really fall in love with what they’re doing. I think there’s something really interesting happening in the photo-industry these days. Max and I saw it in Chicago at ClickCon and then I saw it again at PPE. Thousands and thousands of photographers roaming the streets all trying to soak up some new knowledge and inspiration but so many of them insisting on adding light to an image. We saw soft boxes and flashes and diffusers and stands all over the downtown areas of two of the biggest cities in the country and it occurred to me : for all the time we’ve spent on our team learning to simply love available light (shooting naturally whenever possible) people are still really confused with how light works. Enter Profoto - they’ve been kind of the kings of lighting for ages now but when I was asked along side a few of my very favorite Fuji-X / GFX photographers to play with this new light I was so excited to take on the challenge. Naturally I’m super blessed to have a lighting dude on my team who’s just got a neat eye for things so I asked Max to come along and help me see the potential in a situation and then I got to work learning what this flash could do.
Pretty quickly I realized that this tiny little strobe, for as powerful as it is, needs some modification to help really shape it. To be honest - it’s just really powerful. That’s a good thing if you’re trying to overpower the sun, or really fill light in a classic sense but what we wanted to do with these images was just “kiss” the light across our couple. I saw a tutorial somewhere awhile back about using the inside of a Pringles can to create a long tube to help shape light coming off of a small strobe like this and I’ll say it works incredibly well. (Please don’t stop foil lining your cans Pringles). So : armed with a super hot couple, a Fujifilm GFX 50R, a few lenses, one flash, one pringles can we set off in the rain to make some images I thought would help me really explain the way I see light.
These images will be a part of an E-Book released through Fujifilm’s website highlighting the way all 7 of us (there could be more I’m not totally sure) see light and lighting. I’m a huge fan of not using light to make images perfect but instead to add a tiny bit of artistic flair. So we exaggerated that a bit here to prove a point but I’m really proud of how they turned out. Four different lighting concepts (though all fairly similar), two hours in the rain, and a hilarious soggy hike carrying a 70lb generator, all of our gear, and a commercial fog machine in the dark.
End result here : I hope there’s a shift happening in the photo industry right now. More education. More collaboration. When companies like Profoto start asking primarily natural light photographers like us to talk about how light works I think we’re moving in the right direction. Light is light. Moments are moments. Art - is valuable. And helping to teach people to see art in a moment is something I’m always going to want to be a part of. So grateful for Profoto, Fujifilm, Max, and of course this sweet couple for helping give me the opportunity, the reason, and the inspiration to get out and shoot something so outside of my comfort zone and yet so true to my style of photography.
