About Me
I am a landscape photographer from New York, currently based in the South West of England. I am particularly fascinated by the interface between land and sea. I hold multiple qualifications in engineering but found my artistic creativity was not being sufficiently stimulated.
About My Process
A lot more goes into it than pressing the shutter button. The first phase of capturing any of my photos is research, especially vital for me since I am a stranger in these lands. I use written guidebooks, Google Maps terrain and satellite views, the PhotoPills app, as well as local photographer knowledge to find potential new locations.
Once I find a potential location, I visit in person to scout it out — hiking around to find the best compositions, determine the optimal weather, light, and tidal conditions, and take test exposures. I often take shots in both portrait and landscape orientations in case I prefer one over the other later on. Tide is especially important around here where the tidal range can be as much as 15 meters between low and high water! I take notes so I know when I need to come back to achieve my vision.
After capturing a satisfactory image, the final stage is processing. I use Capture One 21 for all of my raw processing. I aim to use a light touch, trying to alter only exposure levels. To date I have never used HDR or stacking (aka compositing) techniques — all of my images result from a single exposure.
About My Equipment
All of the photos here were taken with my Fujifilm X-T1 or Fujifilm X-T3 with various lenses (almost always primes), or with a Fujifilm X100F. I almost always use polarizing filter — the polarizing effect is one of the only things that simply cannot be replicated in post.
I am a strong believer that the best images result from those which require the least post-processing, so I use various color-neutral filters when taking my photographs. For longer exposures I use the 85mm Hitech Firecrest system paired with an RRS L-bracket, Gitzo tripod, and Arca-Swiss ballhead. The most useful filter in my kit (besides polarizers) is my Firecrest 3-stop graduated neutral density filter.
My most used lens is the Fujifilm XF10-24 f4, but my favorites are the XF56 f1.2 and XF90 f2.