What an amazing couple of days! Huge well done to Alan Raw (photographed below introducing the HIP Photography Festival) & his group of hard working fellow volunteers, staff and photographers to put on such an amazing event. Really looking forward to watching this event grow and grow like it undoubtedly will.  It was super nice to see such a large involvement and body of work on display from the young photographers too. Check this link out for more about the HIPclub Juniors

In two years Hull will been named City of Culture for 2017.  Alan and his team have been tasked with growing this yearly event into something fitting for the year long event which will see many different types of art & culture based events. This blog is a quick round up of my weekend in Hull at the International Photography Festival as things start to grow over the next two years.

Big thank you to all the amazing photographers who came down, spent time talking, chilling out and contributing thoughts & energy into the event. Having such photographers & patrons as Brian Griffin, Frieke Janssen, Matt Finn, John Bulmer, Peter Dench, Greame Oxby & Ami Barwell gave Hull International Photography festival the start it should have.  For me, a personal highlight was taking part in a round table panel looking at the ‘Future of Photography’ with the patrons led by the Artistic Director of the festival Graeme Oxby.  Having such a wide & deep knowledge base to call up, the group was able to offer up some very insightful thoughts about the past and present state of the community and industry in which we love.  I believe everything was recorded and I think it might appear on the HIP Festival website at some point. Facebook/ Website

Below: John Bulmer talking about is books, life and work. Photo: Stephie Rebello

As a side note, It was personally wonderful to sit down with and share a coffee with these amazing photographers and it does still seem a little odd to of had my name lined up with these amazing people – many of which have single handedly shaped the photography world we have today. John Bulmers talk at the Hull Library was incredibly  inspiring to say the very least with the added bonus that he is a Fuji fan too !  We picked up a copy of his first book ‘The North’ which he signed to go along with the book we also picked by Peter Dench (signed too I might add). Great to catch up with Matt Hart too. He was talking just before my trip on stage at the show.

Frieke Janssen talking about her STUNNING work + values of undertaking personal work.

Matt Hart talking about all things Street.

Check out these links:
John Bulmer: www.johnbulmer.co.uk
Brian Griffin: www.briangriffin.co.uk
Frieke Janssen: www.frieke.com
Peter Dench: www.peterdench.com
Graeme Oxby: www.graemeoxby.com/
Ami Barwel: lwww.musicphotographer.co.uk/

Below: Dev Tank Talk. Photo: Stephie Rebello

Saturday – Demo shoot: Single Light Portraits.

You can view PDF that was used during the talk here– Thank you to Matt Hart for shooting the shots of us on stage.

Shooting kit: 3 Legged thing, Lee Filters, Fuji X-T1, TeatherTools, Cactus & RoundFlash

One of my contributions this year (aside from the Dev tank) was to provide a 45min talk on some of the simple lighting techniques I use regularly. Using my Fuji X-T1 tethered to my laptop , Stephie and I created the 3 main portrait lighting types that I use most often, these being Rembrandt, butterfly & split lighting. We also looked at the difference from broad lighting and short lighting.  Below are the key elements from the slideshow I used during the short seminar, below those are some of the images that we shot live on the stage using the Cactus RF90 Flash with the Roundflash modifier.

The use of the dual ND Grad filters was and is always a topic which gets asked about in the Q&A sessions after or during the demos (click here for a fuller blog on this).

During the demo I showed how I expose for the background & use ambient lighting to enhance the mood and story elements, used the flash as an additive means to light the subject. Then showed how the filters are used with the mattebox to shape, tone, finish the images. As the images were show live on the stage, a moment was also taken to show how they are pulled into Lightroom with a preset to tone a Monochrome finish. The image in this blog are right out the camera + Lightroom with no other retouching.

Rembrandt Lighting:

Split Lighting:

Butterfly Lighting:

As a fun footnote – during the prep for this talk, Stephie and I had to make the images for the PDF used during the talk (which you can see here).

It’s been a long time since I had been up to Hull, so, Stephie documented the trip, as always, all the images are either taken on a 56mm APD or similer with a Fuji X-T1 or Fuji X-Pro.