SOOC Live THIS Thursday!

Dodge Van Steering Wheel – Buena Park, CA – Fujifilm X-T5 – Reala Ace Recipe

Mark your calendar! After a two week delay, the next SOOC Live broadcast will now be this coming Thursday, October 19th. Originally, we were going to discuss double-exposure photography (as was advertised at the end of our last show), but we decided to change the topic to Reala Ace.

Why? First, life events happened, and we just didn’t have the time needed for such a big topic, as there are a whole lot of considerations and approaches to multiple-exposures worth addressing. We hope to still tackle this at some point, but understand that it’s a big undertaking, and we can only do it if we have the time to prepare everything. It just didn’t work out this time like we had hoped it would. Second, Reala Ace, which is the name of Fujifilm’s latest film simulation, is a trending subject, and my new Reala Ace Film Simulation Recipe has quickly caught on. So Nathalie Boucry and I thought that we should discuss this instead, diving more deeply into it, while also providing some alternatives.

I hope that you can join us this Thursday! It’s an interactive program, and your participation makes the show better. I’ve included the video below so that you can easily find it, but please follow the SOOC Live YouTube channel so that you don’t miss any upcoming episodes. See you soon!

Let’s talk Travel Photography

Pacific Poppies – Montaña de Oro SP, CA – Fujifilm X-E4 & Fujinon 90mm – Pacific Blues

I traveled to California’s central coast last month. If you regularly read this blog, you’ve certainly seen the pictures, such as Pacific Poppies above. Well, tomorrow—July 6th—Fujifilm X-Photographer Nathalie Boucry and I will be chatting about travel photography in our SOOC Live broadcast. I hope that you can join us at 10:00 AM Pacific Time, 1:00 PM Eastern, as it is an interactive program, and your participation will make it better.

We have a lot of points to discuss—from Film Simulation Recipes to camera gear to practical advice and so much more! If you have any upcoming travel plans, this is a can’t-miss episode! I’ve included it below so that you can easily find it. If you don’t yet subscribe to the SOOC Live YouTube channel, be sure to do so now, so that you don’t miss any future shows.

I hope to see you tomorrow!

Chatting ChatGPT — SOOC Live is Next Week!!!

Abandoned Ford – Cambria, CA – Fujifilm X100V – Urban Dreams

The next SOOC Live show will be this coming Thursday, June 29th, at 10 AM Pacific Time, 1 PM Eastern! Mark you calendars!

I really hope that you can join us, as Fujifilm X-Photographer Nathalie Boucry and I finish our chat with you about using ChatGPT to make AI Film Simulation Recipes. We’ve been shooting with four—Urban Dreams, Kodak Ektachrome E100VS v1, and two others made for the show (called Soft Blue Classic and Vivid Summer Glow). We also challenged you to shoot with one or more of those four Recipes.

We invite you to share with us your photographs (click here) captured with those AI Recipes to be potentially featured in the next broadcast, to be included in the Viewer’s Images Slideshow, and to enter a chance to win a one-year Patron subscription to the Fuji X Weekly App. Please upload your pictures no later than Tuesday, June 27th! That’s coming up very soon, but there’s still time if you haven’t yet begun the challenge. Don’t forget to include the name of the Recipe that you used in the file name.

If you missed the last broadcast, I’ve included it below. You’ll want to check it out if you missed it when it was live. You can find all the past episodes on the SOOC Live YouTube channel.

I hope to see you on Thursday!

Telling Stories with Your Fujifilm Camera

Free Spirit – Pismo Beach, CA – Fujifilm X-E4Pacific Blues Recipe

Photos tell stories.

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words—a lot can be nonverbally communicated through an image. But what exactly is storytelling photography? How do we effectively become storytellers with our cameras? Those questions and so many others will be discussed at length in the next SOOC Live broadcast, which is THIS Thursday, April 6th, at 10 AM Pacific Time, 1 PM Eastern. Mark your calendars now! I hope you can join us live!

For those who don’t know, SOOC Live is a bimonthly broadcast where Nathalie Boucry and I discuss Film Simulation Recipes, give tips and tricks for achieving the results you want straight-out-of-camera, and answer your questions. Basically, we’re trying to help you master your camera, with a focus on simplifying your photographic workflow. On the first Thursday of each month we introduce and discuss a theme—the theme for March was Street Photography—and the fourth Thursday of each month we look at the photographs captured within the theme using the Recipes, talk about lessons learned, and answer any and all of your questions. It’s an interactive show, and your participation is what makes it great!

Last Thursday was the Q&A broadcast. If you missed it when it was live, you can watch it now (see below). We had some very good discussions about street photography, so be sure to play it if you haven’t seen it yet!

Also, check out the Viewer’s Images slideshow! It was so great to see your wonderful pictures—they were quite inspiring to me—and I appreciate everyone who shared—thank you! Take a look!

Be sure to follow SOOC Live on YouTube if you don’t already, so that you don’t miss any broadcasts. I look forward to seeing you in just a few days as we talk about Storytelling! This will be an especially insightful episode, I think, so you won’t want to miss it. See you on Thursday!

I Think You’ll Appreciate This …Or, How to Get Through Another Hump Day

Julio – Arlington, AZ – Fujifilm X-T5 – 1970’s Summer

Recently I shared videos by Leigh and Raymond Photography, Andrew Goodcamera, and Mango Street that mention Fuji X Weekly and/or Film Simulation Recipes. That’s awesome! Those are pretty big names in the camera world. But if you look on YouTube, there are so many other photographers who are shooting with Recipes and making some wonderful content. They don’t (yet) have the large following of those well-established channels, but they deserve some love and recognition for what they are doing. That’s what this post is about. I want to share with you some of those videos that I found, which perhaps didn’t come up in your feed, but are worthwhile to watch.

Today is Wednesday, which is also sometimes called Hump Day because it is in the middle of the week. If today is a struggle and you are in need of inspiration and/or entertainment, this will surely help! Find a video or two (or more!) below that look interesting, and give it a watch. At the end, if you liked it, don’t forget to give it a thumbs up and consider subscribing to that person’s channel. Let them know that you appreciate their content!

I’m sure I missed several wonderful videos. If you published one recently that I didn’t include, or if you’ve seen one by someone else that should have been in this list, feel free to leave a link to it in the comments. The videos below are simply the ones that YouTube presented to me, and I appreciated them so I thought you might, too.

Enjoy!

Introducing the Fuji X Weekly Vlog!

My wife has been telling me for awhile now that I should be on YouTube. She’s completely right about that! Almost two billion people worldwide watch YouTube videos regularly, and about one billion hours of YouTube video content is watched daily. YouTube is the #2 search engine, only behind Google. More than half of YouTube views are on a phone, tablet or other mobile device. There are a ton of statistics which demonstrate that those under the age of 50 are spending a lot of time watching YouTube videos, and about half of those videos are uploaded by people and not companies. There’s a massive audience I’m missing by avoiding YouTube!

I like to joke that I have a face for radio and a voice for print. That’s all in fun, but the truth is that I don’t have the eccentric personality to be a video star. I’m just a regular Joe. I don’t look or sound the part, and so I prefer not to be a video guy. I like to write and I’m pretty good at it. Even though I hunt-and-peck, I’m comfortable and happy typing out paragraphs. I like that I can lay out my thoughts in a clear and organized manor, and it’s easy to change the words if I didn’t communicate something well. I will continue to write the Fuji X Weekly blog because I love doing this!

When it comes to photography, there’s a lot of long-winded content on YouTube. Most videos exceed five minutes, many exceed 10 minutes and some seem to go on forever! That’s good sometimes, but what I often prefer, and I figures others might feel the same way, is content that’s short and to the point. I often don’t have time for ramblings. I feel that there is a need for quality photography-related videos that are under two minutes long, that get right to the point and concisely explain things. That’s my vision for the Fuji X Weekly vlog. I want to produce short videos that are mobile device friendly, that are interesting yet informative, and, perhaps most importantly, don’t feature me rambling on.

I just started the Fuji X Weekly vlog a couple of days ago. I think it will be a good companion to the Fuji X Weekly blog. I hope that it will reach some new people, perhaps some folks who wouldn’t normally go to an “old-fashioned” blog, but would definitely look at a video. I hope that it’s a fresh way to view my content, pictures and ideas. I’ve made three videos so far, which I’ve included below. Feel free to like and share them. Please subscribe so that you don’t miss anything! I appreciate any feedback that you have. Hopefully it just gets better and better as time goes on, because I’m very new to this whole video-making stuff. I hope that you enjoy!