PAUL CHOY – Finding my passion with Fujifilm

February 14, 2020

I remember precisely when I fell in love with my first Fujifilm camera. I was in the Philippines for an underwater photography assignment. As a qualified scuba diving instructor, focusing on the underwater world had seemed the natural choice when I first became serious about my photography.

At the time, I was shooting with a clunky DSLR camera, placed inside an even clunkier underwater housing for protection. In the water, this unwieldy combination became as light as a feather, but carrying around this much gear on land became very tiresome very quickly.

Fujifilm had announced the original Fujifilm X100 shortly before I left for the Philippines, and I just managed to get hold of one the day before I left. It was my very first time shooting with a Fujifilm, and truth be told it was the beautifully retro looks of the X100 which drew me to this camera, rather than the specifications of this first-generation model. I wasn’t expecting a huge amount of this compact camera, but I figured it would be useful for documenting life on the many islands which make up the Philippines, in between dives.

It was only when I got back from my assignment that I had the time to study the images I had captured properly. I soon realised how much more I was drawn to the wonderfully candid photographs of Fujifilm than the underwater shots from my DSLR. The sense of emotion captured by the little Fujifilm camera was something I had never really experienced in my photography before. It was to change my outlook on photography completely.

Over the next few years, my love of the Fujifilm X-Series cameras grew even stronger, inspiring me to begin capturing photographs which really tell a story. Soon my DSLR and underwater housing were relegated to gathering dust on the shelf of my studio.

Today, as a professional travel and documentary photographer, I exclusively shoot with Fujifilm cameras. They have taken me all over the world, allowing me to tell the stories of the people I meet and the places I visit. I have found my passion.

By Fujifilm X-Photographer Paul Choy

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