People often ask: Why did you choose photography as a career and continue to do so for more than 10 years? In fact, I can't find a simple and practical reason to explain the original intention of becoming a photographer. It can be said that many factors happened to ferment together at the same time and made this matter a logical thing.
In an era when the Internet was still underdeveloped, the maximum pixels of mainstream mobile phones were only about 3 million. If you wanted to take pictures with full details and fine colors, you had to invest "huge sums" to buy a digital camera. At that time, I mainly expressed my feelings through blogging, but sometimes the way I express myself through words differs from person to person and is subject to many limitations. How I want to be like the pictures in some song MVs, with music as a foreshadowing, words to tell, and pictures to convey emotions. So, I started with a small card camera to shoot some details of the scenery. Depending on the mood at the time, the photos were either sad, melancholy or happy, and then added a few emotional monologues to the picture. Isn't this the ideal way to release my mood that I have been looking for?
Later, my equipment was changed from a card camera to a digital SLR camera. I learned how to use tones to express emotions in post-production. Shooting still lifes no longer satisfied me, so I started trying to shoot portraits, because people can express emotions, and I can collide with the subjects to create the desired mood in the picture. In my eyes, the subject is not just a model who listens to my instructions, but a person who expresses freely. I am just recording it with my perspective and aesthetics. After a certain amount of time, my husband and I established Sunny Photography Studio together, and deeply integrated our concepts into personal portraits, wedding photography, parent-child and family photos, etc., so that the photos can be taken with warmth, timeliness, and aftertaste.
My aesthetic for portrait photography has always been to have a touch of light tones in the picture, a scene with a sense of life, or even the subject being out of focus in the picture, as long as there is enough space for post-production color adjustment to render the emotions I need to express. My first digital SLR camera, the Canon 5D, fully met the needs I mentioned above. Later, I upgraded to , Canon 5D Mark II, 5D Mark III and 5D Mark IV.
With the development of technology and the increasingly powerful shooting functions of mobile phones, people's demand for shooting has changed from high image quality and complexity to lightweight and simplicity. In recent years, retro-looking and lightweight mirrorless digital cameras have been released one after another. The camera is no longer a single shooting device, but has been given as a fashionable wearable item.
Color is an important part of conveying emotion in the picture. Relying on its profound film color rendering skills, Fuji has launched a mirrorless digital camera system and built more than a dozen of its own "master" film simulation styles into the camera, greatly eliminating the cumbersome post-processing. This has made photography simpler and more efficient, and allowed Fuji to break into more young groups in just a few years. It not only meets everyone's needs for images, but also symbolizes an attitude towards life.
My introduction to Fujifilm mirrorless digital systems was completely unintentional. Fujifilm launched a photography exhibition with the theme of "Home". I was invited to participate in this event and tried Fujifilm medium format digital mirrorless cameras for the first time. Being used to Canon 5D Mark IV, I was not used to Fujifilm's button settings at first and always felt uncomfortable, but the image quality and color captured completely conquered me.
Since then, I have tried Fujifilm's X-E4, X-T4, X-S10 and X-H2s cameras, which made me completely fall in love with Fujifilm's mirrorless digital system.
Fujifilm’s new camera X-T5 has an eye-catching appearance. The body continues the metal texture of retro film cameras and the classic mechanical dial design.
In order to better test the performance of X-T5, I chose the shooting scene in Dali. The autumn scenery here is rich and the sky is high and the clouds are vast, which especially tests the camera's ability to restore colors. It just so happened that during the three days of shooting, I encountered scenes such as sunny days, rainy days, and dark light environments in the inn. As expected, the X-T5 gave me unexpected surprises.
In sunny weather with sufficient light, the X-T5's focusing speed is very agile, without any sloppiness. This is due to the use of the 5th generation X-Trans CMOS 5 HR back-illuminated sensor and X-Processor 5 image processor, which can provide the camera with better AI recognition focusing. The X-T5 not only provides efficient AF tracking and detection of faces and eyes, but can also automatically detect and track many other objects including animals, birds, cars, motorcycles, bicycles, airplanes and trains. Therefore, the photographer can focus on composition and creation.
In the dark light environment of the inn, I changed the lens to the XF50mmF1 R WR, which fully utilized the advantages of the large aperture lens. The five-axis anti-shake function of the body ensured that I could obtain clear images and dark details at low sensitivity. In order to ensure that the subtle changes in the model's eye expressions are captured, the X-T5's electronic shutter speed of 20 frames per second is also quite powerful. We encountered thick fog and gloomy weather in the mountains above 3000 meters above sea level. This is a big challenge for the model's skin color reproduction, so I tried to use the Nostalgic Neg nostalgic negative film simulation mode newly added on the X-T5. It brings a hazy aesthetic to the picture, while maintaining clearly discernible details and bright color performance. The model's skin color gives people a translucent and real feeling, which greatly reduces the need to correct the skin color in the later stage. Of course, in addition to this classic film mode, the other 18 film modes also have their own characteristics, and they are all Fujifilm's most representative film effects.
In addition to its excellent photo shooting performance, the video specifications of Fuji X-T5 can also meet most shooting needs. The highest video resolution it can shoot is 6.2K, and it supports 6K 30P H.265 recording specifications. At FHD 1080P resolution, it can shoot 240P up to 10x slow-motion video. In addition, the new recording frame indicator function of the X-T5 is very useful in real shooting. When recording a video, an obvious red frame will appear around the screen to indicate that the video recording has started.
X-T5 represents the return of the Fujifilm X-T series, a return to the shooting experience and feel. Good equipment will make our creations as easy as a fish in water, but it also places higher demands on photographers. No matter how advanced and intelligent the camera in your hand becomes, it is a tool for shooting. It has nothing to do with beauty. The real beauty comes from the photographer's understanding and recognition of the world, and his understanding and outlook on life. The main theme of portrait photography must come back to people and find answers from their eyes.
Lily Liu
Portrait photographer
Founder of Kunming Qingtian Photography Studio, POCO Internet photography celebrity, contributing articles and shooting covers for many magazines and publishing houses.
