Walcott static caravans. My first and second attempts with my new GFX50s

I don’t know why i like taking pictures of traditionally unphotogenic dare i say ugly things, but theres a certian something that pulls me into their viscinity and demands that i take the picture. I started going out with my camera and “shooting in anger” as i call it (by which i just mean going out with the pure intention to take photos) in June 23. The coastline of Norfolk is incredibly diverse, we’ve got sandy beaches, pebbly beaches, dunes, salt marshes, fancy towns and villages full of second home owners, rundown seaside towns and grotty attractions and lots and lots of holiday and static caravan parks.

The photo below I took on my 3rd intentional photowalk in June 23 as i previously mentioned, its a scene i stumbled accross without giving much thought as to composition. I was in a run and run mode that morning. as it was summer sunrise on the east coast was something like 4 am. I got to the beach at 5ish, the sun already up, i missed blue hour( although i hadnt actually heard of blue hour at this point) and i had to leave at 0620 to get to work. I took lots of photos that morning and a handful of them im still happy with now. There was one photo in particular though that has stuck with me. The scene in the image below of the static caravans bathed in morning light really stuck with me.

Walcott static caravans, June 2023. Fujifilm X-T20+XC35 2.0

The things i like.

It has a calming quality, i can’t quite identify. Stillness i suppose.
the colours have a pastel quality and you can almost feel the sunshine.
The composition in general is pleasing to my eye ( and thats all that matters)

And the things i dont like

i took the photo in somehwat of a rush, a self imposed rush as i was excited to be out with my camera and the combination of fleeting morning light and time constraints and wasn’t able to spent the time really looking at the scene
i used a custom film simulation recipe on my X-T20 and shot the photo as a jpeg, meaning the colours, which now look over saturated and somewhat garish to my eye are baked into the image as the film recipes export as jpegs only. I did shoot as jpeg and raw so i do have a raw file of the scene i can edit. however i was shooting with the pic preview turned on. for those that dont know, that basically means that your custom exposure and colour settings are applied to the image youre seeing through the viewfinder. this is great because you can really visualise the scene, however it can throw the exposure off for the raw image as the histogram is displaying the information for the adjusted highlights and shadows of your recipe. so long story short, the raw isnt exposed in a way that gives me the flexibility i would like. lesson learnt and i now shoot with pic preview off and no longer use recipes , perfering to edit the raws ( for the most part recipes and sims still have their use)
f/5 was the aperture i used. i probably didn’t change it from the previous thing i was shooting and i feel its a way too open for this scene, the depth of field from f/5 is way too shallow resulting in the grasses to be out of focus and the rear caravan to be too soft.

I watch alot of photography videos on youtube, more than anything else really and theres a few channels i really enjoy that are much more “photography process” focused as opposed to gear review channels which are much more prevalent. My two favourite photographers with channels i watch are Jason Kummerfeldt with his channel Grainy days and Nick Carver. Both of these guys are film photographers who have a liking for shooting the rundown buildings and desert scenes of California, USA. Whilst their approaches are very different their videos both take you along on a journey and focus on the process of captuiring the image, not getting into gear facts and figures. Nicks videos in particular really resonated with me. He has a series on his channel called “on location” where he takes you along for the journey photographing one particular scene (usually a cool mid century building or characterful place of business) on his panoramic 6x17 medium format view camera. Nick takes great care in both planning the shoot in advance, with in depth research online and location scouting as well as with taking his time when on location and paying attention to as many details of his cosen scene as possible. His meticulous and slower process is in part due to his usual camera of choices’ way of operating, its much more involved than a digital or even a traditional medium format film camera. But also he is just striving for perfection always and wants to do his chosen scene justice. His eye for detail has really rubbed off on me and its what prompted me to go and reshoot the static caravans at Walcott.

Me framing up, whilst trying to keep the tripod still in 45mph gusts.

I decided that blue hour would be my chosen light for the caravans. the cooler light of blue hour illuminates the mainly white walls of the statics in a really pleasing way and i knew that if the sky remained clear enough i’d get some lovely reflections in the windows, catching the lovely pink sky. I got to the seafront at about 0620. Sunrise was at 0730, so my ideal conditions would start presenting themselves at around 0650(boy did they). I parked up on the front and got out to find the best place to set up my tripod. My camera of choice was my new Fujifilm GFX50s with the GF50mm f3.5. im completely blown away by this camera and it really helped me make the most of my composition. The lens has a slightly wider field of view thatn the lens used on the original, but i managed to position myself and get a very similar compostion

One thing i didnt really think about was the wind. The wind was a pretty steady 30mph with gusts up to 50mph, and it was pretty unrelenting. It presented two challenges for the morning. The first problem was a fairly obvious one, keeping the bloody camera on the tripod still. i just had to remember to hold on to the tripod and essentially keep it as anchored as possible. The second problem i didnt really pick up on at first but after a couple of test shots i did. The wind was blowing the clouds along at quite a lick and they were well illuminated so very noticable.

To acheive the depth of field i needed to get as many of the statics in focus as possible i had to use an aperture of f/11 or maybe f/16. If this had been my X-T20 with its apsc sensor f/8 would have been more than enough. Now im not a fan of “milky clouds or water”, the look you get from using a longer shutterspeed to smooth out said clouds or water creating a smooth appearance. I wanted the clouds frozen in time as I saw them. This meant that i needed to use a shutter speed of no more than 1.5 seconds as that seemed to be the best compromise when used with an aperture of f/11 to let in as much light and keep the depth. Now this is where the GFX really surpassed itself. Now to use the aforementioned exposure settings, an ISO of 640 was needed. This is higher than i would have liked, i tried 100, 200, 400 but they all resulted with too much underexposure, 640 seemed to be the minimum i could effectively use. I realised that i was holding into my opinions of ISO and the assotiated noise that comes with higher numbers from using my APS-c sensor’d X-T20. The GFX50s along with the mast majority of Fujis mirrorless cameras are ISO invarient. I wont get into the science but it basically means noise is somehwhat kept to a minumum when using higher values. When i got some and loaded the files into lightroom, the only way I could tell an ISO100 image apart from a 640 image was when I zoomed into 200% and really pixel peeped. i was very impressed. The final image is below, and it turned out exactly how i hoped. The moon even made an appearance and really finished it off nicely.

I really enjoyed getting out with my camera and just focusing on one subject, really taking my time to focus on the details and compose the image to the best of my abilities.

1st post. reshooting a personal favourite