Analogue world? /  by richard bentley

There has been a resurgence of late with the use of film to shoot. So much so that Leica has rereleased their classic M6 film camera.

Here's a few musings on why this might have happened:

Film Aesthetics: Film has a distinct look that can vary depending on the type of film, the camera used, and the development process. Many photographers appreciate the grain structure, color rendition, dynamic range, and tonal qualities of film. Film can produce rich and nuanced images with a unique texture that is sometimes perceived as more organic or nostalgic.

 

Slower, More Intentional Process: Film photography typically involves a more deliberate and considered approach. With a limited number of exposures per roll, photographers need to carefully compose their shots and make each frame count. This slower process can lead to a deeper connection with the subject and a heightened sense of anticipation. It encourages photographers to be more deliberate in their decision-making, resulting in a different creative mindset compared to the immediacy of digital photography.

 

Unpredictability and Serendipity: Film photography introduces an element of unpredictability and serendipity. Factors such as film stock, exposure, development, and even environmental conditions can influence the final outcome of an image. Some photographers embrace this uncertainty as it adds a sense of mystery and surprise, making each frame feel more unique and magical.

 

Tangibility and Craftsmanship: Film photography involves physical negatives or transparencies, providing a tangible and tactile quality that digital files lack. The process of developing and printing film requires technical skill and craftsmanship, which can be deeply satisfying for photographers who enjoy working with their hands and engaging in traditional darkroom techniques.

 

Nostalgia and Emotional Connection: Film photography is often associated with a sense of nostalgia and a connection to the history of the medium. Many photographers appreciate the connection to the past and the traditions of film photography, which can evoke a sentimental and romantic sentiment. Film can also evoke a particular mood or atmosphere that resonates with the photographer's personal vision.

Shadows travelling on the sea of the day /  by richard bentley

'Shadows travelling on the sea of the day' is a recent installation in the North of Qatar, near Zubarah Fort by Icelandic/Danish Artist Olufar Eliasson. Under the patronage of H.E. Sheikha Al Mayassa Bint Hamad Al Thani, it sits in the desert approximately 5 minutes drive from Zubarah Fort.

Shadows travelling on the sea of the day

North of Qatar, near Zubarah Fort.

Olufar Eliasson has had wide ranging shows encompassing installations, painting, sculpture, photography and film that have appeared in art galleries all over the world. You can read more about his work over on his website.

I visited his art installation at the weekend with my daughter. It was about a 75 minute drive from our home and there was plenty of father and daughter talk on the way and she had her trusty Fujifilm instant camera with her (yes, she is already better than I am at photography).

Circles, mirrors, sand and sky and… shadows.

You have to experience the other worldly feeling here! Incredible.

The artwork transports you to your inner self, the mirrored surfaces, when you look up to them, reflect the earth between you, you are caught in this kind of ethereal limbo, almost floating in space, it felt. This feeling led me to process the images in a black and white ‘other worldly’ style… this is how I felt they ought to be, what do you think?

Which way is up and which down?

The desert is reflected back down at you from above via the vast disc-like mirrors.

My daughter took her instant camera along

Without dad’s guidance, my daughter was free to roam around and get these awesome shots on her Fuji Instax camera!

Proud dad moment

She’s got the photographer’s eye, alright!

As someone who lived in Denmark for 6 years, I am thrilled to have artwork from Olafur here in Qatar.

Out shooting that day, we took an instant camera, one of my 3 GFX systems, the 50S today and an adapted Canon 17mm Tilt Shift lens. Hurry up Fujifilm and release the GF mount 30mm shift please!

Camera gear for the day

See that gaffer tape? Always take gaffer tape!

Fuji GFX 50R with Canon 17mm tilt shift lens

ND and polarising filters from NiSi filters.

Taken with camera phone… look at that wide angle distortion!

See how the image looks ‘warped’ - that’s often a problem of mobile phone photography. Behind the scenes shot.

Filters are a must for long exposure photography.

Buy the best you can afford.


If you have any questions about the shoot, the GFX system or using til shift lenses, leave a comment below.

A fallow season of photography. /  by richard bentley

Regenerate, rest.

Make time for yourself to recover.

For about 5 months of the year, from about May to September, I don't take any photographs outdoors in Qatar. For those of you who live here, you will understand why, but for the uninitiated, the heat coupled with humidity (mainly the humidity) and the laws of my biology and the tech of the camera do not permit for it.

I would often spend those summer months working on indoor projects, macro, portrait, fun personal projects, but this year I took a break… Why?

I remember in a history class in school, a teacher was talking about how in agriculture, farmers would leave some of their fields fallow. Leaving a filed fallow (unplanted, left alone) allows the land to rest, to regenerate itself. No crops are grown, the land does not have to ‘give’ of itself. This can happen for years and when the farmer once again sows seeds, the land is rich with nutrients to feed those tiny plants and help them grow for us all to enjoy at our tables.

I think we can all learn something from that, we need extended periods of quiet time, we need to let our minds wander and sometimes work on other things to expand our creative thinking and do other things…

For me and my family, our fallow time was travel. We hadn’t seen some members of our family for years, due to Covid-19, due to other commitments and several other factors. But in 2022 we spent a lot of time with family in the UK, in Denmark and in Egypt. We made connections again, we spent time outdoors and we refreshed ourselves and filled our emotional buckets with all of that good stuff.

At the end of September, I will begin to head out again with the camera. My rested mind ready to wander and yet focus again on the images I have in my mind, but am yet to capture… The FIFA World Cup comes to town in a few weeks and there are several road closures, so for me it will be a time to visit the quiet deserts, away from the crowds and still enjoy a few games on the TV with my family.

Here’s to cooler weather, some great photography opportunities and making new connections…

Remember to allow your mind to be fallow from time to time, remember to be offline and recall the joy of silence and peace.

Memories are made of this... /  by richard bentley

I’ve started this little tradition on my birthday. I drive deep into the desert with my family. It's peaceful. It's an escape from the crazy world for a while. I take my camera and capture memories - taking the most important pictures I can take: the ones of my family. I bought my 4 1/2 year old daughter an instant camera when she was 3 as I was always in love with our family's instant camera as a kid, as is she... I remember moving home 2 years ago and my wife was distraught as she couldn't find the only family album she has (luckily it turned up). Cameras, lenses: they are metal, plastic and glass, but the images we create of our families are precious; a gateway to our past and signposts to faltering memories.

The power of the Instant /  by richard bentley

When I was a kid, my parents had a Polaroid Instant camera. We actually also has a 16mm film camera, which I loved too. I was really INTO those things, addicted even. I still am. The magic of the instant camera, its sound, smell, when the image began to appear… pure magic!

My youngest daughter, now 4 1/2 loves cameras too. When she was 3 I got her a kids instant camera which she adored. My wife and I have pictures of ourselves taken by her on our fridge door at home, we treasure them.

We are often too lazy to print our digital family photos, aren’t we? Personally, I have them backed up on 4 hard drives and 2 different cloud storage solutions - so I guess they are a personal memory archive, and I’d argue that the photos we take of our families are the most important photos we will ever take…

A day or so ago, I took my daughter with me on a photo expedition into the desert: our first as father and daughter. Of course, we took dad’s ‘big camera’, but we also took her instant camera and a spade to ‘dig for treasure’ (a great analogy for finding a great image too!).

My photos on that day were terrible. The clouds had gone, there were a lot of 4x4’s making tyre tracks in the pristine dunes, but my daughters images were super! She was (and I), very proud of her efforts. We even went for a horse ride on the way home to celebrate!

I can’t really put into words how proud I was of her on that day. An adventure with dad, an escape from the city, a first photo essay. If you have kids, buy them a cheap instant camera - they may surprise you, and at the same time, you have a pre-printed memory, right there in your hand, just as your kid saw it!

If you’re interested, here is the one she uses (we are not sponsored for this): Fujifilm Instax kids Camera

Coffee and coffee syrup product shoot /  by richard bentley

A good friend of mine recently reached out for a product photo shoot. His brother is setting up an online business selling coffee and coffee syrups all around the world. Now, like any startup, he is starting small, so a fast and economical product shoot is what was required.

This simple setup took 2 hours with a 2 hour shoot and about 2 hours in photoshop… all in all 6 hours work. Of course, more could be done, but when your client is on a budget, you deliver what’s required based on that budget.

The brief was ‘shoot against a white background for social media’. I decided to take it a step further…

Scrim, frosted perspex and a 3 light setup with the GFX50R medium format camera and 100mm Zeiss Makro Planar lens.

Final images were delivered as high resolution TIFF and JPEG (1:1 aspect ratio for Instagram). Bottle caps were touched to remove any scratches and a highlight glow was added to the logo of the product (the most important part of any product).

THANK YOU! /  by richard bentley

I have had the pleasure of recently selling some mounted and occasionally unmounted art works. I want to thank everyone who has purchased prints recently, especially during these difficult lockdown times.

Money earned from selling prints is going towards a new computer fund, since for the last 7 years I have been working exclusively on an early 2012 15” MacBook Pro without a 2nd monitor… so I need to save my neck and back and get a larger monitor and more powerful machine to handle the files I am creating with my 102 megapixel medium format camera.

I hope you enjoy the prints and would love it if you could spread the word please.

Thanks for stopping by,

Richard.

May 2020 and we are in lockdown (Covid-19) /  by richard bentley

The summer is here in Qatar. This usually means that the photography season is over - well, at least outdoors photography.

During the hot and humid summer months, I change direction radically. From the lines of the architect and the skies above us in my architecture work of Qatar to more introspective, conceptual and some might say ‘fine art’ photography (although I have always found this to be a slightly pretentious and overly used term).

Lockdown during this awful pandemic coronavirus has meant I have had some time to focus on getting back cowriting this blog and focussing (pun intended) on the other side of my photography.

The purchase of a 102 megapixel medium format camera also means I can now produce both kinds of work in resolutions only once dreamt of.

Thanks for stopping by,

Richard.

It's been a long time since my last blog! /  by richard bentley

With Instagram, Facebook and other commitments, it has been some time since I had chance to update my blog here…

About 3 months ago, I decided to leave facebook behind, along with Twitter… to simplify and only use instagram and my website, a visual medium.

This year has been a busy one so far, with moving home and re-working the website, but hopefully soon I will find the time to add more content to the blog and more images from my vast database to the website.

A huge thank you to those who have purchased prints this month, your support is truly appreciated!

All the best,

Richard.

Fujifilm Workshop /  by richard bentley

It was my honour to be asked to come and present at the recent X-Series photography workshop event held in Doha, Qatar.

fuji4.jpeg

With Aref Al-Ammari

One of the world’s finest food photographers.

The local Fujifilm team here in Qatar, had arranged a 3 hour session which included talks on food photography, travel photography, and my presentation, which was on how to shoot time-lapse and video using the Fuji X-T3.

My main topics included correct intervals, equipment for time-lapse, basics of post-processing and the 4K, F-Log capabilities of the T-T3 when shooting video.

Guest lecture at Texas A&M University /  by richard bentley

“Inventing Creativity & Re-Imaging Our Lives”

It was my pleasure to give a lecture to students and faculty at Qatar’s Texas A&M University as part of the STEAM initiative which aims to introduce arts and creative thinking into engineering & science programmes. My talk, specifically showcased the use of photography and how it sits in a space between technology and the arts. Thank you Texas A&M for inviting me to talk at your prestigious university.

Texas A&M lecture

Texas A&M lecture November 2018

Fujifilm X-H1 first thoughts /  by richard bentley

I had the opportunity to test the Fujifilm X-H1 last night in low light conditions. Great look and feel and ergonomics to this camera and a joy to use. Fast menu system, great dials, wonderful EVF system. 

I'm looking forward to shooting some HD and 4K footage with this soon and will post some results. In the meantime, here are a few still images I took using the 16-55mm f/2 lens.

Hope you like the results as much as I enjoyed using this camera!

Huge thanks to the guys at Fujifilm in Landmark Mall and the FujifilmQA team in Blue Salon, Doha. 

 

Black & White challenge. Leica v's Canon v's Sony /  by richard bentley

Leica Typ 246

Leica

M Monochrom (Typ246)

For some time now, I have been interested in getting my hands on the Leica M Monochrom (typ 246) camera. It is a dedicated 24 megapixel black and white (monochrome) camera, which means it can only take black and white photographs. Leica's truly are the Rolls Royce of cameras. They are prestigious, beautifully crafted, artisan products made of the very best quality materials and designed and built by the world's best camera craftsmen. 

Leica's claim is that the removal of colour sensitivity in the camera improves the fidelity of the black and white image, compared with carrying out a black and white conversion using a DSLR or mirrorless camera that records colour and then converting this image to monochrome in software after taking the picture. 

Leica state on their website: "As the Leica M Monochrom has no need for a colour filter, there’s also no need to calculate luminance values by interpolation. The result: black-and-white pictures with unrivalled sharpness – even when shooting in low light."

Source: Leica's website

I was fascinated by this and wanted to see for myself...

I had no way of renting the camera where I am currently based, but I was VERY lucky to be given the chance to trial the camera from a local dealer, to whom I am very grateful. 

I then took several photographs with the Leica, and also the same image with either a Canon 5DSR (over 50 megapixels) and a Sony A7SII mirrorless camera (12 megapixels) and converted them to black and white.

The images are tagged 'A' or 'B'. 

Can you tell which images are taken with the Leica?