Lifestyle

Marissa Keltie

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Portfolio shoot with Marissa Keltie

I’ve known Marissa Keltie for a few years and have worked with her several times as part of The Eves duo. However, this was the first time I photographed her alone. Aside from being a talented musician, Marissa is also a commercial model and a voice-over artist and was looking to update her portfolio. I love how these images turned out and I think Marissa is pleased too cause this is what she had to say about this session:

 
“Kris Kesiak is such an amazing photographer who I have the pleasure of working with regularly. He always manages to get the shots I’m looking for and always has a smile on his face, singing and dancing - shoots with him are lots of fun!”
 

I’m blushing although perhaps I should cut down on the singing, I’m not that good! Aaaanyway, the shoot took place last month at Basement49, an East End studio I use a lot and you can see some images from that day below:

GEAR
Nikon D850 + Nikkor 85mm f1.4
Tiffen Black Pro-mist ¼ Filter
Profoto B10 + Profoto OCF Softbox 3' Octa
OCF Softgrid Octa
Reflector

COP26 Activists

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portraits of climate activists at cop26 in Glasgow

The COP26 theme is back, hope you don’t mind - it was a busy couple of weeks for Glasgow! This was a really enjoyable job which, after the seemingly never-ending lockdowns, made me feel excited about photography again.

Project Everyone is a United Nations Global Partner for SDG Advocacy and Outreach which seeks to put the power of communications behind the Sustainable Development Goals, also known as the Global Goals, and I was asked to take photos of their climate justice activists who arrived in Glasgow from all over the world for the conference. It was a beautiful sunny November day and the shoot took place in Broomielaw area of the city where Global Goals put up a huge billboard displaying giant post-it notes with their 17 sustainability goals. Each activist was asked to pick a goal close to their heart and got photographed in front of it. Here’s a selection of images from that day:

GEAR
Nikon D850
Nikkor 85mm f1.4
Nikkor 50mm f1.4
Tiffen Black Pro-mist 1/4 Filter

Cristina Prelle

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Cristina Prelle specialises in high end textile restoration and I had the pleasure of working on promotional photography and video for her. Have a look below:

GEAR

Nikon D850 + Nikkor 85mm f1.4
Neewer 120cm Octabox
Profoto A1
Profoto Air Remote TTL-N for Nikon
Reflector

Video filmed with Sony A7III + Sony 35mm f1.8 and edited in FCPX
Neewer CN-216 LED Light

FujiFilm x100v

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Thoughts on FujiFilm X100v Camera

My name is Kris and I am a lazy photographer. What I mean by that is that I’ve never been the type of photographer who carries a camera everywhere they go, taking pictures of anything and everything. I’ve always admired such people, I’m just not one of them. I value comfort and practicality above all else. See? Lazy. When I started taking photos, it was with a Zenit 11 and that camera is built like a Soviet tank, not exactly a “throw-in-your-pocket” type of equipment (although it could certainly double as a weapon if one had to defend themselves). In recent years, with photography becoming my full-time job, I’ve worked with various Nikon DSLRs - D700, D4, D850 - but these are expensive cameras to be carrying around and not exactly light or compact either. I’ve realised, however, that I missed taking snaps of my friends or of places I was visiting. I’d usually use my iPhone for that but it never feels right for me, no matter how great the phone cameras are these days. And this is what brought me to the FujiFilm x100 series.

I’d been watching various YouTube videos about these cameras, reading reviews, checking prices on eBay, and last year I eventually bit the bullet and bought the then recently released x100v model. First of all, it’s beautiful. I often feel that in the digital age the aesthetics of a camera are the last to be considered. I realise that what a camera looks like isn’t of utmost importance for most, and I’m not too bothered about it either when it comes to the equipment I use for work (the Nikons aren’t exactly ugly but they won’t be winning beauty contests anytime soon). However, if I’m going to carry a camera with me every day, I want it to be compact, practical, and, yes - pretty. And the old-school, analog-borrowed look of the whole x100 series is really lovely (I went for the silver model). As for the performance, I’ve been shooting with x100v for almost a year now, always have it in my bag, and I really love it - it definitely exceeded my expectations when it comes to image quality and it also brought back the joy of taking photos just for fun, without overthinking. I’ve got it set on Aperture priority and don’t worry about much else. I mainly use it for personal things: meeting friends, traveling, behind the scenes, etc, but I’ve also occasionally taken it out on work shoots and ended up with decent results. All in all, I’m super happy with it, and here are some examples of snaps I’ve taken with the FujiFilm x100v so far:

Guest Editorial

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I love Barbra Kolasinski’s work and was delighted to be asked to photograph her new collection “Guest”. I don't shoot a lot of fashion for a variety of reasons (lack of budgets, unpleasant individuals, etc). Still, I’m super happy when the right opportunity with the right people presents itself. For this project, Barbra put together an absolutely stellar team of not only talented but also genuinely nice creatives (check credits below).

We shot this collection at The Pyramid, a brilliantly bonkers, Brutalist, B-listed building in the middle of Anderston which now serves as a community centre. Despite many people involved and a variety of clothes and looks to get through, the whole thing went super smoothly and was actually a lot of fun. Long hours and cold be damned if you’ve got a great team you’re working with! Barbra wanted something weird and not traditionally “pretty” - thus weird poses, setups and ambiguity. This turned out to be probably the biggest editorial I’ve done so far and I couldn’t be happier. Check it out below:

Clothes + Styling: Barbra Kolasinski
Model: Erin Lathangie / Colours
Make Up: Sara Hill
Hair: Rochelle Jolley
Set: Flowers Vermilion
Videographer: Bob Rafferty

Behind the scenes:

GEAR
Nikon D850 + Nikkor 50mm f1.4
Profoto A1 x 2
Profoto Air Remote TTL-N for Nikon
Neewer 120cm Octabox
Reflector