PATRICK FURTER: The challenges of commercial shooting
What can I say, for a photographer whose forte is weddings, I just love challenges. Many moons ago as a photographer’s assistant, my time was spent on commercial photography only. Give me food, cars, trucks – anything but people. Luckily my mindset changed as I got booked for more and more weddings, a genre where the ability to communicate with people is of immense importance. However, ever so often a commercial shoot comes along, and I just cannot get enough of this simply because it comes with a unique set of challenges.
Take this recent shoot for Compass Logistics. My brief was to capture the cargo loading process and then follow the truck and cargo on route to the destination.
The challenge with this type of shoot is that the process doesn’t stop, so there’s no opportunity to light it properly or pose any person or object.
This means absolutely nothing can be done for the shot, you just have to find what’s needed and shoot. Time is money for the client and he needs images basically in real-time to show the manufacturers and clients how things are progressing, as well to post on social media.
Maybe this is one of the main reasons why I just love the Fujifilm X-systems. When it comes to this type of do-or-die scenarios, the straight-out-of-camera JPEGs are second to none, and usually exactly what the client requires.
These images were all shot on the first X-T1, and even now the dynamic range on this first-generation is still blowing my mind. You can shoot at any time of the day and still retain accurate detail from images. The image quality is of such that with a little smartphone editing it all looks great. Finally, with the Wireless communication feature and the Fujifilm app on my phone, it is just so quick to get images anywhere in the world in a matter of minutes.
As I keep saying, put a Fujifilm camera in my hand and I can climb any mountain – whether that mountain is a destination wedding or highly challenging commercial shoot.
