Halloween project with the Fuji X-T2
Hello Austris! This isn’t the first time we have your work on Fuji X Passion but, still, for the ones that don’t know you yet, would you like to introduce yourself?
Hi! I am a photographer based in Latvia. I have fall in love with Fuji X system about year ago. My main work is sports photography, portraits, reportage, little weddings and little bit from everything else 🙂
How did the idea of this project came up? Is this the first time, or have you been doing every year?
This is my second year I’m doing this kind of shoot. Last year this idea came to me just like a way to test out Fuji X-T1 and have some fun. So we set up a shoot and I shot halloween portraits with my sun and few neighbors kids. That shoot was turning point for me to switch to Fuji X cameras. I sold all my Nikons and Hasselblad as well. Detail and sharpness I got from X-T1 for my eye was much better and nicer then I could get from another both systems.
This year I knew that we can make more scary characters and in a way cooler looks. So I teamed up with my make-up artist and we did it again 🙂 And as we wanted to go little extreme, we choose to work with adult models, so we don’t have any restrictions.
There’s a brilliant work on the makeup. Who was the responsible for that?
Make-up was done by my friend and great make-up artist – Vita Vitola. She also lives and works in Latvia. All looks was her ideas and also she found all models.
How many hours of work she had on the models?
In total 2 weeks. Vita was preparing for this shoot 2 weeks, since day I agreed in this project. In these two weeks she made silicone masks, bought all needed stuff for make-up, blood, etc. Found all models and got all props for shoot. Only the dog was a surprise for all of us 🙂 On shoot day Vita did all 3 looks in about 5 hours. As I know one look she had to redo as it wasn’t working as planed, but in the end everything turned out great.
For this photo shoot, what was your gear setup?
I was shooting on my X-T2 with 3 different lenses – 16-55mm F/2.8, 50-140mm F/2.8 and Voigtlander Nokton 50mm F/1.1. But the hero shots turned out to come from Fujinon lenses. Nokton just couldn’t hold up in image quality. All images are shot on base iso200, around F/5.6 and F8 and 1/200 shutter speed.
Used to shoot with the X-T1, have you noticed a big leap on this new X-T2?
I still shoot with my X-T1. I use it more for sports photography or as a second camera. Overall X-T2 is better, but difference depends from every photographer itself. On paper of course X-T2 is much better camera, but in real life difference is not so big. As from user experience, I like X-T2 more. To compare these both cameras – it’s an another article, long one 🙂
Thank you for this quick interview. And we’ll be waiting for the next year’s photos!
