Mac Sokulski | MiKS Media Photography

New York Part 2: Central Park

by Mac Sokulski | Dec 9, 2015 | Fuji Landscapes, Fuji X, Landscape, Nature, People

I figured that Central Park should get it’s own post. As we both love landscape photography, it was an easy choice. It’s a beautiful place, and hard to imagine it’s location, among the skyscrapers of Manhattan. Coming from western Canada, where fall has long past, and the world turned to gray and brown, it was such a relief to still see magnificent colors present. It brought immediate memories of childhood days. I believe this has made Central Park, even more special.

Photographically, it’s a paradise. One could spend days there, photographing nature, wildlife, and people. If you are carrying a camera in Central Park, be prepared to be asked to take photos of strangers. The bigger the camera the more you will be asked. Carrying a little Fuji with me, I guess I wasn’t considered a serious enough photographer, but a friend that was with us, and his big DSLR camera, was asked constantly. So here is an advice, if you want to be left in peace, don’t bring a DSLR camera to Central Park.

While taking pictures, we tried not to duplicate ourselves, and it wasn’t easy to do. Here is what we came up with from the brief, albeit memorable visit.

Remember to click on the images to see them in full glory 🙂 Enjoy.

New York Part 1

by Mac Sokulski | Nov 20, 2015 | Art, Fuji X, Urban

We made it… we can scratch off the Big Apple from our bucket list, at least a little. A spur of the moment decision, a weekend in New York. That’s all it was. Having 2.5 days in New York and try to fit as much as we can into it, was crazy. But we are like that, a little nuts. We hoped for a nice sunrise or sunset (we got both), and fairly good day in the city. The best part though was meeting new people. Dominick and his whole wonderful family was a wonderful host, even though we invaded their home, and wrecked a little havoc in their lives. They are beautiful people, that we will be in debt to, for a very long time. Thank you Dominick and thank you Niki, Zac and Kaden.

First day in Manhattan. What a day. Grand Central Station, Times Square, Central Park, the subway (and no sandwiches there, just lots of people), Brooklyn Bridge and a bit of Brooklyn. An adventure of a life time. Really. Apart for sore necks from craning at the hugeness of it all, and really sore feet from walking about 19km, we were happy. Since we were all walking together, it was difficult to create very different images. I was concentrating on the fisheye look, while Kasia took more conservative approach. We both really like the fisheye look, the distortions that this lens creates. Even though, it’s not an easy lens to use, to create something interesting. The ease of it, is that for the most part, it’s a lens you set and forget. Because of it’s wide angle view, you can set it for 5.6-8 aperture, and infinity focus, and just point and shoot. Done.
Yes, of course there are tons of things to see, but if you are strapped for time you make choices, and see the iconic places, and try to replicate the iconic images that everyone makes. So that’s what we did. It’s our memories after all 🙂

Once we got to the iconic Brooklyn Bridge, we met up with Antonio Rosario from Switch2Manual podcast. I’ve been listening to that podcast for a while now, and discovered Antonio’s street photography, which is quite amazing. So since we were in New York, why not meet up, as he puts it, in “meatspace”. So we did, and I run into a bit of a problem. Because I was chatting so much, I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to the fisheye lens. It must have moved off it’s infinity setting, or the aperture switched, because most of the New York city scapes from Brooklyn Park, were just slightly out of focus. I blame it on being tired, excited, and a complete twat, photographically speaking of course 🙂

It’s really hard not to write more, as the whole day of adventuring with cameras in great company through New York, is a trip of a life time. I just wished we had more time to discover the city better, and spend more time on creating better photographs. Even though we have never met Dominick, nor Antonio before, we chatted and emailed before, and it felt like meeting old friends again.

We shot a lot of images so I thought it would be good to combine our images into a single post. Good luck finding Kasia’s Sony and my Fuji images :)…. there will be more, much more in next post. Remember to click on the images for full size.

When things don’t go as planned and Fuji comes to the rescue.

by Mac Sokulski | Nov 4, 2015 | Art, Boudoir, Fuji X, People

On the onset of this little write up, just want to warn that the images attached to this post are not really safe for work 🙂

Had a great opportunity to shoot with Kate again. She’s an amazing model to work with. Her understanding of poses, and light is second to none. We planned an outside setting for the shoot, but it being autumn in Alberta, the weather did not cooperate. That’s one thing that went wrong.

Second I wanted to try flash photography with film, and not having a proper light meter… you know the rest. It simply didn’t work. Eyeballing the light and manual camera settings is for pros, not people like me. So that’s another thing that failed. Not completely, but it wasn’t as good as I have envisioned.

Thirdly, my Fuji XT1, which I brought as a backup to the film cameras, decided to be stubborn and refused to work with my lights. I use radio poppers as a remote transmitter, and because some silly setting inside Fuji menu it just refused to work. There is certain criteria you have to have for Fuji XT1 to operate strobes. The camera cannot be on silent mode, it cannot have electronic shutter enabled etc. etc. WHY?? The flash should work anyway. You might get terrible results, but it should still work. Nope, not this time.

Even though it refused to work with speed lights, it got it’s magic back, being able to work in very low light situation very very well. The combination of the the excellent Fuji 56mm f1.2 lens and great high ISO performance of Fuji XT1, finished the session successfully.

There was a lot more things that failed, like putting the film in the camera backwards, not being able to focus properly etc. etc. Yes lack of experience… it was a great learning session though. Thankfully Fuji came to the rescue. Oh and one little tip… when in doubt push the film while developing. It’s not easy to recover underexposed images.

Jasper in Celluloid

by Mac Sokulski | Oct 12, 2015 | Landscape

Our 22 year anniversary, and we decided to spend a day in the mountains. It’s been almost 6 months since we took a trip there. I thought it would be a great time to try out some film shooting. So I dragged that beast of a camera, the Mamiya RB67, all over the place. I have to confess, I did have my Fuji X-T1 as a backup, but didn’t use it at all. This allowed me to take more images of the family, which on trips like this I usually for get to do. This time I thought I would concentrate on images that will matter to me more, than just landscapes.

The weather wasn’t very nice. Rainy and windy. Colors of autumn are practically gone from the mountains now. The leaves blown by the winds. I know that Kasia will have more colorful images from this trip. I just concentrated on b&w. So here we go. Just a few images from the anniversary trip. Enjoy!

Celluloid reflections

by Mac Sokulski | Oct 2, 2015 | Uncategorized

Now for something completely different… While Kasia is busy shooting and sharing her wonderful images, of landscapes and nature, I took a bit of tangent.

Film and Medium Format

I was always interested in making images in medium format, either 6×6 or 6×7. I always liked the look of images created in this format. I wasn’t interested in film, and as some of you listen to my podcast, Shutter Time with Sid and Mac, I always make fun of people who still shoot film. I call them Masochists. Well I have become one. Am I being hypocritical? In my regard shooting film is a means to an end. I wanted the medium format look, but not at the 30k prices of digital. So the only solution was to find an old medium format camera and film. I have found and beautifully preserved Mamiya RB67, and my photography skewed.

Passion?

Some people who shoot with film, have a passionate relationship with the medium and the old mechanical cameras. I, on the other hand, couldn’t be bothered. I don’t really care how the shutter sounds, or the levers work, or the whole process of pouring chemicalsand swishing everything about, just so 20 min later I can see the negatives. I care about the last result, where I throw the negative on the scanner, and see the image on the screen. I’m after the image, not the process of getting to it. I’m not passionate about film, or old gear. I had more than my share of failures because of old crappy gear, that was crappy 40 years ago, and it is still crappy today, no matter how much it is praised by hipster-nation. I’m passionate about the end result. The image.

Mamiya RB67

This is a beast of a camera. Heavy, with so many little things that need to be done before you expose a bit of celluloid, that people who allow themselves to shoot, with it are really Masochists. The week I got it I thought it would be a good idea to try doing a simple model session with just this camera. Brought 3 rolls of 120 b&w film and went to town. I did have my little Fuji X100s with me, but I did not stray from the hipsterish path of masochistic delight 🙂 The results I present to you. Enjoy!

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