Digging through the archives, I came across this severely blown out photo of Juri. I was about to delete it but after pulling the exposure down -2.7 stops in Lightroom, I was intrigued and developed it into the image you see below.

The top one was the first shot I took, at f/1.5, before realizing the ISO was set at 640 instead of 100 (~2.7 stops higher than I’d intended), and the mechanical shutter maxed out at 1/4000s. I am consistently blown away by modern digital cameras’ sensor latitude and ability to recover something decent from photos which at first glance appear to be ruined, especially pulling back clipped highlights. 

The context behind this shot - we were traipsing over some rocks in Kakumäe at sunset, looking for the perfect angle to get a shot of Claudia, our model for the evening. 

I had put the Helios 85mm f/1.5 on my Fuji GFX 100S because we wanted an otherworldly/lofi look for this shoot, but in open sunlight wide open this lens is ridiculous, and I wanted to take a few quick test shots of Juri to see whether the Helios’ signature megaflare, dreamy, creamy, turn-my-face-to-butter effect would be a little overkill. Sometimes it’s perfectly complementary, sometimes you wonder whether shooting through a layer of vaseline really served a purpose. 

Here are a few more test shots of Juri, which did convince me the Helios needed to be swapped for the Fuji 110mm f/2. It’s a scalpel compared to a spoon in this instance, much more clinical look, but I wanted the fine details of Claudia’s jewelry to really pop. And it offered more control on a shoot that I did not want to screw up.

But before doing so, I did take a few shots of Claudia with the Helios just for fun. Because at the end of the day, it really is just a blast to use given how unpredictable it is.

Thank you for reading my first post on here in 2023! 

Todd