SHOOTING A FILM WITH FUJI X PASSION
Back in October I got together with Hugo and Mauricio of Fuji X Passion to make a film about shooting landscapes on the coast of Portugal. We wanted to make a film that captured the spirit of photography, as well as covering all the practices in the field and final post processing.
Despite being pretty unlucky with the weather, which is usually interesting in October, we had a lot of fun shooting at one of my favourite locations, the beach of Praia d'Ouriçal at Portugal's westernmost tip of Cabo da Roca. It's a tricky beach to access and carrying numerous cameras, a drone, heavy video tripods and 5 or 6 bags down to the beach was a lot of fun, but it's the kind of place that when you arrive it always feels worth the effort.
We shot the ocean here, looking at composition and how to capture movement in the water, and despite having heavy cloud and little direct light, it's still an atmospheric and fascinating location to shoot.
Heading back up the cliffs that night in the dark with all the bags was a lot of fun, we grabbed a quick bite to eat as the next day we were meeting an hour before dawn to capture the sunrise.
The location this time was Vasco da Gama bridge in Lisbon. It's an iconic location for dawn shots as it faces east across the wide estuary of the river Tejo with the sun rising behind the structure of the bridge. Once again the clouds stayed low but it's another place where mood and atmosphere can be used to create an interesting image. We looked at shooting long exposures to blur out the detail in the water and clouds, and focused on creating minimal compositions.
Vasco da Gama is a very different location to Ouriçal. Where the beach is wild and feels incredibly remote, the bridge is close to the centre of the city, and we were shooting from the boardwalks which is incredibly popular with joggers out for their morning run.
Once again we shot with multiple cameras and a drone to try to fully capture the locations on film. After breakfast we headed back to my home where we filmed how I would approach processing the two images, looking at using Tony Kuyper's luminosity masks for introducing mid tone contrast, exposure blending of multiple images and then final sharpening for the web.
It was a lot of fun recording the film and are looking forward to doing more....we've got a street photography shoot in Lisbon planned for later this month. The film is available to purchase from the Fuji X Passion site, and you can see a trailer below.
If you're interested in shooting these incredible locations, we're running a landscape photography workshop in mid October which features these two places, as well as some other fantastic locations on Lisbon's coast. Click the link below for more information.