Humanity

Text and photography by Kevin Mullins

My role as a member of Kage is slightly different to the others.  I'm a storyteller, sure, but almost all of my commercial storytelling comes within the framework of a wedding celebration.

Many of my contemporaries in this [wedding] industry place total importance, and perhaps rightly so, on technical skill and their ambition is driven by the perfect picture.

I'm less worried by all of that. 
Sure, I understand Light, Composition and Moment make an award winning picture.
Sure, I understand a crop at a knee can add ambiguity to a frame.
Sure, I understand even a minuscule of blown out highlight will guarantee an image will never win an award.

I've had several epiphanies in my short life as a photographer; the epiphany that I don't need large cameras being one of the most prominent.

However, a long time ago I had another epiphany (of sorts).  To a certain extent my work has always been about the non-technical.  Its about humanity and humanities constituent parts; human interaction, love, laughter, silent contact, emotion......love.....love.....humanity.

Humanity
hjʊˈmanɪti

the quality of being humane; benevolence.
"he praised them for their standards of humanity and care"
synonyms:    compassion, brotherly love, fellow feeling, humaneness, kindness, kind-heartedness, consideration, understanding, sympathy, tolerance, goodness, good-heartedness, gentleness, leniency, mercy, mercifulness, pity, tenderness, benevolence, charity, generosity, magnanimity

All of the images below have been assaulted by other photographers and judges, generally based on their technical mis-merits (and they are correct). They have each failed catastrophically in high level photographic competitions.

The truth is they are not technically great, but they were never going to be.  If I was to stage these moments well, then, these moments would never have occurred. How sad would that be?

Light, composition, moment? 
Moment first, for me, at least.

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a Royal Hunt

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Text and photography by Bert Stephani

Becoming a hunter in Belgium is a lot more complicated than buying a gun and venturing into the forest. It requires passing a pretty testing theoretical exam followed by a series of challenging practical exams. The exams are held only once a year and it’s a tradition that the top 20 performers get an invitation for a hunt on the royal hunting grounds, a privilege that is usually only reserved for the happy few. I never came close to be top of the class on the hunting exams so when I got the chance to experience a royal hunt as a photographer, I jumped to the occasion. 

In the late afternoon I meet Jan, an obviously smart young hunter and his personal hunting guide for tonight who also happens to be the head keeper for the royal hunting grounds. It becomes immediately clear that the hunting here is not just some kind of royal gesture to justify all that tax money they get, it’s a special gift in many ways. These forests are some of the most beautiful places in the country and no effort is spared to keep them in pristine condition for man and animal. The guide is an intense man who generously shares his wealth of knowledge and experience with Jan who soaks up every whispered word.  

We move slowly, all our senses on full alert and desperately trying not to snap a dry twig. Every few meters, Jan and the guide scan the area with their binoculars looking for deer, roe deer and wild boar. I’m doing a delicate balancing act of getting some pictures without spoiling Jan’s outing. It doesn’t take long before our guide suddenly freezes. He points in the distance but I can’t see a thing from where I am standing. The guide and Jan crawl to one of the many strategically placed blinds. The rifle comes out and I see Jan peering through the scope but no shot follows. I’m invited into the cramped blind and through the guide’s binoculars I can make out two does and a fawn. I was not carrying a long lens, so you’ll have to take my word for it. The does are fair game today but as we don’t know which of the two does is the mother of the fawn, we all enjoy simply watching the trio. 

After this amazing encounter we move on, always making sure we keep the wind in our face. Although we don’t see any game for a while, we all enjoy the sights, the sounds and the smell of the forest. It’s at moments like these that I’m amazed by how good our human senses can be. 

The light is fading quickly and our guide proposes to spend the last half hour in another blind that offers a decent chance at seeing roe deer. We all squeeze into the tight blind and we wait. Twenty minutes later we see a dark form emerge from the trees. It’s a female roe deer and since some need to be culled to maintain a good natural balance, Jan clicks of the safety of his rifle. As the roe doe turns broadside the small blind is filled with the loud report of a shot. The doe goes down as if struck by lighting, she never knew what happened. As is custom we stay in the blind for a couple more minutes to let the peace descend upon the forest again.

To prevent the meat from spoiling, it’s important that the guts are removed as soon as possible. Generally the guides take care of this but Jan asks if he can do it himself. He admits that he’s never done it before and everything he knows about this task, comes from watching YouTube videos. The guide clearly appreciates that this young hunter is not afraid to get his hands dirty and learn.

The notion of time fades away with the last light and is replaced by a sort of primal truth. 

This story would not have been possible without Frederik and Jan who kindly invited me to join them on their hunts, knowing perfectly well that taking along a photographer could have had a negative impact on their hunting chances. 

The invitation to photograph this outing came in about the same time that a secret prototype of the Fujfilm X-Pro2 landed on my desk. I decided to take the plunge and shoot this story with the prototype. To give myself some flexibility and a fully weather sealed setup, I shot most of the day with the XF16-55 f2.8 zoom lens. I wanted to travel as light as possible, so I completed my kit by stuffing some batteries and the 35mm f1.4 in my right jacket pocket. As a backup, I put my X100T in the left pocket. 

I had played around with the new camera for a couple of days before to get used to it. Having shot a lot with the X-Pro1, it was pretty easy to move on to the X-Pro2. The only thing that bothered me at times is the back button focussing. On the X-Pro1, I've always used the AF-L button to focus with my thumb but on the X-Pro2 I found it ergonomically better to assign the AE-L button to function as the AF-L button. By now my muscle memory is retrained but in the first days, I've pushed the wrong button repeatedly. 

I shot pretty much everything in aperture priority with auto ISO, just riding the exposure compensation if necessary. The biggest technical challenge for me was to shoot for JPEG-files as I knew I wouldn't have access to the Lightroom RAW presets I've created for my hunting photography until Adobe adds support for the RAW-files of this new camera. I've selected the ProNeg S film simulation, set noise reduction to -4, color to 0, Sharpness to +1 and Highlight Tone was set to -1 to preserve details in the bright parts. Throughout the day I changed the Shadow Tone setting repeatedly to get a good mix between the kind of shadows that I wanted and giving myself some detail with post processing in mind. 

Every sound decreases the hunter's chance of succes, so I activated the electronic shutter for totally silent operation. Due to the technical limitations of electronic shutters there's always a risk of unwanted artefacts, certainly with low shutter speeds, but I didn't experience a single glitch. 

At the end of the day in pretty much total darkness, I switched the 16-55 for the 35mm f1.4 to gather the very last photons of the day. 

I've shot most of my ongoing project about hunting (book will be finished in 2016) with the X-Pro1 and even though the X-T1 has become my main tool because of it's technological improvements over the X-Pro1, I still prefer the rangefinder-style form factor. With the X-Pro2 I have the best of both worlds and more:

- weather sealing and dual memory cards offer protection and peace of mind
- the AF has taken a big leap forwards again and the joystick makes selecting AF-points a breeze
- even though the camera pretty much looks the same as it's older brother, it feels more secure in my hands
- we now get 24 megapixels and the sensor still offers this unique Fujifilm magic
- despite the extra pixels, there's at least one more stop of useable high ISO sensitivity.

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The Woodshop

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Text and photography by Patrick La Roque

Phil was a painter and we were an alternative band. Or goth...depending on the mood.  We'd play underground clubs and he'd always be there, a friend as passionate as we were; as crazy. Now I'm a photographer dabbling in music and he's a woodworker, dabbling with paint. The years have grizzled us both, adding a hint of wisdom that's nothing but a front—we're still just kids inside, forever, because none of that ever changes; you come to realize it eventually.

The room is cold and perfect. A refuge of sorts.
We're just shooting the breeze here.
Drinking espresso.
Fighting off the years.

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The Witch Hunt on Jiak Kim Street

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I am at Zouk Singapore but tonight is no nightclub, instead I am in a large cave in the Underworld. There are no clubbers, for the dance floor is filled with characters from every Halloween nightmare. Bartenders of the Undead serve us bloody drinks while zombies drop tunes on us from the DJ booth.

This is the last halloween as Zouk Singapore nightclub is closing down and relocating to a new venue in Singapore. This is it. The last witch hunt on Jiak Kim Street and every ghost, ghoul and goblin has come out to play. 

All images made at Zouk Singapore using pre-production Fujifilm X-Pro2 camera.

Open Trenches

PHOTOGRAPHY AND TEXT BY DEREK CLARK

My mind drifted as I looked out the window of the SUV. The voices speaking in Tagalog (the national Filipino language) were now off in the distance as I sunk deep inside my own head. I can usually pick out enough words to piece together what the conversation is about, but my brain had switched off many miles back.

We pulled into the Long Island National Cemetery and along the road lined with hundreds of graves until we arrived at the walls. Cristy's husband had been a pilot during the Vietnam conflict and although he only passed away a few years ago from a heart attack, his ashes were placed here. A place for her to visit.

I walked along each side of the walls, reading the names and photographing the things that loved ones had left behind. Gifts that were never meant to be used. There were emblems of different faiths next to each of the names. Christian, Catholic, Muslim, Jew …etc. United in war regardless of beliefs.

I came across a wall where names were yet to be engraved and remains yet to be placed. A sign nearby read ‘CAUTION - OPEN TRENCHES - PROCEED WITH CARE.'
Yes, with care.