Full Circle.

I moved house last week. Actually, we (my fiancé Kate and my son Tom) moved house last week. The last 9 days have been busy, testing and upsetting (our beloved cat had to be put down) . Photography has been the furthest from my mind during this time and this is difficult to deal with. Photography is my passion, my career and my creative pressure cooker. I am at my happiest creatively in that moment when I compose a shot. I love editing pictures and enjoy producing online posts and physical prints of my work. In this time, I traded in one of my GFX cameras and a lens or two to fund a shift back in time.

My shift away from Fujifilm happened a few years ago but I’ve gradually returned via the GFX medium format and X100 series cameras. I missed the ability to take an interchangeable lens camera with relatively small lenses out into nature. I looked at the X-T5 and X-H2 but decided I didn’t need to spend my money on those as I already have a GFX 50S II so I went for an X-T4. Some of my best prints were shot using this model. It’s very affordable these days as it’s ’old technology’ but I have fallen back in love with Fujifilm. They are the brand I’m most comfortable with,they do the essentials right and the cameras are small and portable.

I don’t have many XF lenses and I don’t want to own a whole collection as I also use the GFX 50 for my professional work. I have a trio of landscape lenses and a 33mm f1.4 and that’s it. The lenses cover me from 10mm to 300mm. They all produce sharp detailed images given the right handling. I can match any output I made with full frame cameras but with a considerable weight saving. The X-T4 I feel, is a forgotten model in the XT series. It is outshined by its successor and less loved by its predecessor. It was however , the first XT camera with IBIS, has great video features and is a joy to use. I’m really pleased to be back ‘home’ where I can rekindle my love for my work. We took a trip out to Towneley Hall in Burnley today for a change of scenery. The autumn colours are appearing and the weather was perfect landscape photography weather. Moody skies, rain free and enough detail in the atmosphere to give your photos that autumnal feel. I hope to get out more in the next couple of weeks to take some more photos. I need to remember the new house is a long term project and it isn’t the only thing thats important.