Portrait Photography with Nicole Lee and Fujifilm – Beauty Winsome.

It has been around 3 weeks since I last wrote as it had been crazy juggling starting to write professionally for a second periodical (yay!) plus all the demands of life but of course, I am back!

*and we are on our way to keithwee.com hitting 1.1 million views too! 

While busy prepping for the next huge camera release from Fujifilm (I am sorry I missed the Fujifilm X-A7 release and have very little idea of it as I was too preoccupied with another camera and thus not able to help much with questions on the X-A7)

Amongst this tight timelines, I managed to dig out some time to meet up with Nicole, a free-lance model who is as great to work with as they get and of course, the shoot was done with Fujifilm. 

A successful portraiture shoot is not only composed of an attractive model (note that attractive does not have to refer to traditional notions of beauty) but instead, it also includes the point where the model and photographer can be comfortable with each other and clear about the expectations and boundaries.

In this sense, this lady is a gem in that she settles into role quickly, with nothing close to a diva’s temper one might find in some models. 

*all the samples shared here were photographed using the Fujifilm XF56mm f1.2 or the XF35 f1.4mm lens obviously on a Fujifilm camera. Mental note: I should try the XF200 f2 for portraits one day. 

With Fujifilm renowned for its beautiful rendering of skin tones, I am never far from portraiture but instead of shooting in a studio setting, my preference is always to be always outside, to take in the world around us. 

A meetup with a fellow Fujifilm X-Photographer very recently was pretty inspirational, to cite his words verbatim: 

“Any camera can shoot good images, but it is when the user has full trust of his camera then the relationship is elevated from an owner-tool to one of a partnership.”

And it is this trust in the output and image quality that keeps me with Fujifilm despite the unreasonable amount of camera equipment that goes through my dwelling these years. 

Most of the images shared here are in fact shared straight out of the camera and only edited for exposure and cropped slightly. If you have not realized by now, I did not even remove that pimple she had on the day in post-processing. 

The set of photos below happened later after we realized that well, we can do a quick makeover with a different cut of the dress and so we went dress hunting halfway.  This is casual portraiture the way I like it in that the level of comfort between model, photographer, and equipment must be present. (But obviously, if it is a client’s desire that I photograph in a studio or fixed setting, then it is different as in this sense the client’s interests come foremost)  

Thank you for reading, and look forward to the next article soon!

Of course, if you do have a legit assignment available, Nicole can be contacted at nic@facestm.com