The Fujifilm X-E3: The last (and beloved) compact photographic Swiss knife of the Fuji X-E family !

Not long time ago, Fujifilm have seemed to confirm the cessation of the X-E series (X-E1; X-E2; X-E2S and X-E3 models) and many X-E photographers were very disappointed by this decision. The Fujifilm X-E series, although that some reviewers were never able to appreciate it, was a kind of cult among its faithful users over the years. With the latest X-E3 model, the series has reached a certain maturity mainly because it reunites the compactness exigence with the technical performance requirements.

For sure, the X-Pro series has been and still is the pro reference for the rangefinder style digital camera models from Fujifilm, but the X-E ones were and still are appreciated for their lighter camera body and their more discrete presence. If you are a travel, street or casual photographer, you can attest of their versatility and their very capable functionalities.

This is the second X-mount model series that Fujifilm will phase down, this first one has been the X-M one. The SLR fashion camera models like X-T3digits and X-T2digits series have now take the lead for the compact Fujifilm representation alongside with the sans-viewfinder X-A models.

Only future will tell us if it was a wise (commercial) decision from them or, more optimistically, if Fujifilm will change its mind and will resurrect the X-E series. Let's hope for some light in that direction!

Cayo Largo désertée (mars 2020)

L'année 2020 sera marquée d'une pierre noire pour l'ile de Cayo Largo, avec la fermeture momentanée de son aéroport en début d'année et finalement la désertion complète de l'ile en pleine haute saison touristique de mars 2020 par sa clientèle toujours fidèle mais vaincue par les évènements que l'on connait.

Nous avons fait partie des tous derniers contingents de visiteurs alors que d'ores et déjà la moitié des complexes hôteliers avaient mis fin à leurs opérations et que pour les autres, il ne reste qu'une poignée d'irréductibles.

Malgré toute cette désaffectation exceptionnelle, Cayo Largo a gardé son charme incomparable et sa douceur de vivre au son des vagues déferlantes sur ses plages blanches. Ce refuge parfois rustique demeurera toujours une destination pour celles et ceux qui veulent momentanément s'affranchir du rythme effréné et bruyant de notre société matérialiste.

Last plane for the travel photographers!

Is travel photography a now past occupation? At this hour and at this day (March 27, 2020) every country is quietly closing its frontiers to foreigners and even to its own people that have been too late to catch the last flight available. One week ago, I was part of the first groups of people to be repatriated with the new airplane in-board rules that have seemed to be surrealist on the moment. They are now a standard process in the very few incoming flights to come.

What will be the world in the coming months and years? Nobody really knows! For one, the innocence of past travelers who have candidly explored the planet is a thing of the ... past! Nobody will ever be felt that full confidence about its own security, at least for sanitary obvious reasons. But there is more than a simple touristic impact from the recent events. There is also a very local one. Suspicion is now part of us very near neighborhoods. So, it is not only travel photography that is in jeopardized but any out-going photography (street, casual, etc.).

If we understand the logics behind the confinement measures, we have not really apprehended how they can be fully articulated in our day-today life. Simple acts of our basic social behavior have been abolished without any kind of substitution effort. Suspicion have replaced curiosity and it will take time to get a more relax human approach to other even with the familiar ones. Can photographs be able to take the relay of your on-sight relations? May be or maybe not. We don’t know what the common sentiment regarding socializing versus individualism will be.

During the last moments of our night return flight, I was observing through my airplane window the aerial view of the Montreal city with its empty highway roads and knowing how the traveling activities of any kind will drastically decrease almost to an unbelievable stand still. You know intuitively that, at this precise moment of time, there will be a day before and a day after.

Simplicity can be digital!

Fujifilm X-H1 / XF 50mm f2 R WR

Prelude: Having worked with different Fujifilm X-mount camera models * have teach me that simplicity is still reachable with digital camera devices. The photographic fundamentals stay the same as we can select the basic setting in the same manner as we use to do during the film (analog) era. Opting for a film simulation, choosing an ISO sensibility, reading the exposure reading in accordance of our shutter speed and aperture preferences and finally adjust our focus point through manually or automatically.
* Thanks to the digital camera designs from Fujifilm that mimic the film (analog) ancestors.

Yes, that debate seems to rage over the web photo planet for years and since the digital cameras and their vast inherent electronic possibilities have substituted their film-analog counterparts. Not new but always so actual. In fact, all the basics in photography remain the same (although sometimes translated differently technically) but the digital access to more parameters like film simulations, color and exposure sciences that were almost impossible to think when we were using traditional films cameras, have completely changed the photographic landscape.

Fujifilm X-T20 / XF 55-200mm f3.5-4.8 R LM OIS

Giving access to some specific technical parameters wont obviously give you the understanding of them and the competence to interact with them. And may be the will to go that further in your photographic art! Because we don't need to absolutely fine tune everything, we intend to use to get your picture results. And some camera implanted formulas are widely renowned for obtaining outstanding performances into our picture making and it doesn't diminish our involvement to reach great imagery.





Even if we appreciated the well technically mastered pictures of all kind, it stays that the choice of the subject, its composition and its picture taking moment are still the very fundamentals of success in photography. And imperfections could be in a way part of the originality of every photo interpretation. Personal sophistication is also a manner of our mind (previsualize) image selection.

You may want to better control some exposure parameters for specific photographic purposes. The most noticeable ones may be the shutter speed for freezing or not the subject movement(s), and the lens aperture, for reducing or increasing the deep of field (the subject in the clear focus distance range). Experimenting and studying the different results you will obtain can help you to further push your artistic creativity and by extension your own visual originality.

In some extend, as you get more familiar to play with these parameters, you will develop some photo setting reflexes that will increase your working efficiency and also allow you to get easier the picture results you are looking for. You may find that every single subject may ask you a different technical approach and it is up to you to create different setting formulas that will apply accordingly. For example, action subject in movement could ask you the use of an higher shutter speed to freeze them or, on the contrary, a slower one to reproduce the impression of this mobility or even a moderate shutter speed combine with a panning of the central subject to produce its blurred background. So, every personal requirement may ask a specific formula.

Fujifilm X-H1 / XF 55-200mm f3.5-4.8 R LM OIS

The deep of field debate is another never ending discussion. On the opposite side of the usual argumentation, blurring a subject can also develop a specific interest of it. The travelling of the observer image eyesight can create a complex interest about a two-dimensional picture. Tack subject sharpness is not always the perfect solution for a subject or a scene. Impacts of second level or third level can enhance the total photo experience. Even with a modest maximum aperture lens, you can use the deep of field phenomena creatively especially for short distance subjects.

I cannot more emphasis how the choice and the interaction with your photographic subject is paramount into your visual artistic picture expression and also for the image composition and the picture taking moment you are privileging. Those important points can surpass the only technical requirements of many in doing a more interesting content. Yes, the digital photo cameras are wonderful tool, but we have to develop also our personal vision of this world that must be translated using these devices. Persistent et repetitive photo experiences are a good way to fulfill that always renewing task.

Fujifilm X-H1 / XF 55-200mm f3.5-4.8 R LM OIS

In a short conclusion, my only concern is that the present photographers may not be fooled by the actual film-analog resurgence fashion that is falsely stating that film is the equal to digital in terms of technical possibilities. It is simply not the case. Furthermore, as a ex-photographer of the film (analog) era, I can assure you that the present digital photography technology surpass in every ways the old film way of producing pictures, and if you need a printed result, there is a lot of digital printers and fine art papers that can fulfill the challenge. But if you want to reproduce the film (analog) era experience of setting and using a camera, it can be easily done with a present digital camera model of your own.

Photographic (human) uncertainty

Wind-Blow-Over-The-World / Fujifilm X-Pro2 & XF23mmF2 WR

We are living in a fragile but resilient world and the recent events tend to prove it without a doubt. When everything is going well, we seem to fell fully confident of your invincibility but when the things are starting to get wrong, this self-assurance can be blown away replaced by fear and disbelief.

Two weeks ago, I was preparing myself for a short two weeks pause into my favorite island of Cayo Largo in Cuba with no any real concern regarding the global Mondial situation. Yes, at that point of time (Beginning of March 2020), there is some concern about a pandemic evolution of the Covid-19 but still the scale of the global menace was not clear and most of us were acting as usual. In those two little weeks, blinded into my faraway place, everything has changed and generated an outstanding new situation in every way.

Uncertainty has replaced our unconcerned behavior. We are now astonished by the utmost frailness of our society, our entourage and our own life. In that context, is there a photographic (human) testimony that we can create and perpetuate to the ones who will follow us? Because at the end photography may survive us and document those others whom will take the relay of our social community.

Life is a strange thing. She can appear and disappear in a flash on time. Life can produce a moment of time that look eternal in photographic terms but will dematerialized in a very brief time. As a photographer we want to register at least a more durable trace of it. In our mind there are so many different images of past that we will love to preserve but we know already that all this will disappears as our time will be past. For us photography is may be the only escape from the emptiness of the remembering future.

Today I sincerely hope that the photographers of this world will understand the fragility of life and be concerned to preserve the most magic moments of it. That is may be the most daring task to do for us.

Photography over the Web: an absence of authenticity!

(Foreword) Authenticity can be expressed with emotion, sharing, and generosity but also be opposed to self profit, narcissism and egocentrism.

Back to the infancy of the (large) public Web introduction, it was common that its contain was impregned of naivety, frankness and openminded will to help and share common passions such as photography. The platforms were not really sophisticated but everybody was not caring at all. But those times had come to an end when more commercially oriented people began to take the lead and simply push the basic quality level of the presentation to, let’s say, a more professional one.

If you are involved into the different commercial markets, you know already that what is appearing is often very different from what it is in reality. So, from small pieces to small pieces, the presence of photography as an innocent passion of the art and the tool have changed to a deep promotional race for the manufacturers, the promoters and finally the users. That change can be easily retraced by observing the recent evolution of the "vlogger" phenomena. Even the more popular and basic ones don't try anymore to put totally improvised contains and now they will script, screenplay and strongly edit their video posts.

At the same time, the pictures presented over the Web are more and more post-edited often with important masking, intricated subject montages and profound color and texture transformations. What we are now looking at is more a photo painting interpretation than a picture testimony in direct relation of a chosen moment of reality. And it seems that the general people like better these consumerist products that are an evident cultural standardization of their virtual world.

Who can be respond of that inevitable tendency if not everybody who is demanding for a physical world of certainty, of security, of mutual likeness, etc.? We ask for it, the web creators just answer to it. And that tendency, excuse the expression, is getting viral day after day without any hope to downplay it anytime soon.

I will certainly not blame anybody to try to embellish his/her life. That's human and that's positive. But in doing that for everything, everywhere et at any moment is progressively creating some kind of frustration because there is no perfect model that already works flawlessly. Sure, we aspire to get there but there are so many other interactions, contexts and evolutions to cope with, that is impossible to prevent new situations and learning from them.

The second alarming Web tendency is the apparition of individual and institutional but sophisticated hatred behavior regarding not only political or cultural subjects but also for consuming products which is annoying by their violence carried over simply goods like camera models. If you don’t like, just don't click on! But it is not only that because, in fact, they want to "eliminate" it! They aren't looking for a respectful discussion, they want to destroy the competition. And I am finding this very disturbing because humanity evolution is based greatly on its social interaction not the reverse.

Authenticity and integrity for ourselves, respect and openness for our community and our society are values that need to be translated through all our communication channels and in particular over the Web which is now occupied so much of our daily attention. We have to elevate ourselves from that another infancy that is polluting the actual public relations and discoverer the beauty of differences among us.