When the camera changes the way you look
I am always looking for beautiful light. Not necessarily spectacular light. I am drawn to light that has direction, that gives shape to a building or a face, but without becoming harsh. For me, there is a very subtle balance in that.
I made these photographs in the Cotswolds with my Fujifilm GFX 50S II.
The first photograph shows quite well why I take the camera out of my bag. The light comes from the left and brushes across the stone buildings. It has direction, but it remains quiet. Nothing spectacular is happening. I simply love the atmosphere.
But once I look through the camera, something else happens…
A camera creates its own world. And with the GFX I notice that very strongly. The image in the viewfinder has a softness and subtlety that I respond to immediately. I start noticing things because I see them through that camera. So the camera is not only recording what is in front of me, it also influences what I begin to look for.
That may sound a little romantic, but for me it works in a very practical way. With my Canon cameras, I often see a more direct image. With the GFX, I am more likely to look for stillness, nuance, texture and small differences in light. As if the camera invites me to look less harshly. That probably has something to do with the fact that I am looking at a video image of reality through the electronic viewfinder.
And then there is the beautiful level of detail.
When I zoom into these files, there is an enormous amount of information in the stone, roof tiles, window frames, trees and walls. The rendering of that detail is so refined. To my eyes, it really is a different world compared with my Canon files.
That is one of the qualities I love about medium format: from a distance the image can feel very soft and quiet, but when you move closer, the detail becomes incredibly rich, so beautiful. In a way, these photographs really deserve to be seen as large prints on a wall. That is when you begin to see what I see when I work on them on screen.
Looking at these photographs again now, I might give some of them slightly more contrast. Taste changes. Mine certainly does.
But I would not want to lose what attracted me to them in the first place: the stillness. That beautiful sense of stillness is what I want to show here.
Photography is often about making reality just a little more spectacular. Sometimes I find it more interesting to do exactly the opposite.
If you’d like to see these photographs at their best, come and have a look on my screen sometime. I’d be happy to show you what I see in them.
Technical: Fujifilm GFX 50S II · GF45–100mmF4 R LM OIS WR · mostly photographed between f/4 and f/5.6.