Costume balls were immensely popular from the 1830s. From the 1860s, families in their fancy dress costumes or special outfits could be professionally photographed in a studio complete with props and a painted background. 

“These photos were private memories kept in frames or the family album, where undoubtedly many are still to be found,” said Jan Brazier. 

Communities held balls to raise money for good causes and from 1900 they included the ‘poster ball’ when businesses would pay fundraisers to have someone wear a costume festooned with advertisements for their products. These balls were as popular in high society as in country towns and suburbs. Costumes for Sunlight Soap, Silver Starch laundry powder, Jelline jelly crystals and Silver Drop self-raising flour can be seen in the exhibition.   

A blockbuster sale in New York next month will feature the work of the greatest names in American photography and some of the most famous images of the 20th century.

It will also offer the work of a less celebrated group of photographers: police officers. The auction will feature 264 mugshots taken by the Scranton police department in Pennsylvania between 1916 and 1951.

Listed as by an “unknown photographer”, they are expected to sell for up to $15,000 when they are offered at Sotheby’s in a single lot alongside portraits of Ronald Reagan, Bob Dylan and The Beatles, taken by Richard Avedon, and Dorothea Lange’s iconic 1936 dust bowl image, Migrant Mother, which is offered for up to $300,000.

Migrant Mother, taken in Nipomo, California, in 1936, became a defining image of the Great Depression

DOROTHEA LANGE

The images are part of

Architecture is an art form that reflects human creativity and engineering ingenuity and is not simply about buildings and structures, and one of the most fascinating ways, for me anyway, to capture the beauty of architecture is through multiple-exposure photography. Photographing architecture using multiple exposures allows you to create unique and visually stunning compositions that showcase the architectural details in a whole new light, capturing the intricate details, patterns, and textures of the buildings and structures in a creative and artistic way.

What Is Multiple Exposure Photography?

Multiple exposure photography is a technique where two or more images are combined into a single photograph, which I’m sure you already knew. In traditional film photography, this was achieved by exposing the same frame multiple times, resulting in the blending of different images on a single negative. In digital photography, multiple exposures can be achieved through in-camera settings or post-processing techniques. Depending on your camera you may be able to capture 2 or more frames as multiple exposure shots. For the examples shown in this article, I used a Fuji XT-5 which captures up to 9 frames.

Control

Perhaps the main difference between multiple exposure and ICM is that you have greater compositional control and details within the final image. With ICM you create your composition relative to your subject matter and then your shutter speed and movement dictate the final outcome. Both do have their plus and minus points and both can be combined to create your image. You could for example use your in-camera multiple exposure setting and shoot any of the sequential shots as an ICM, in manual settings, and then shoot the remaining shot(s) as a focussed composition. Resulting in a mix of both ICM and multiple exposures.

Camera Settings

My own personal preference for this type of imagery is now to shoot solely in jpg format so that I have the final image captured in one frame without the ability to edit the positioning of the captured frames in post-production as would happen if you shot in raw. Even if you do shoot raw your camera’s firmware will create a final blended image of your sequence, however, for me, I did find that with the other single raw images, I would be tempted to realign some of them to get my final image. Whereas shooting solely in jpg meant I had to reflect upon the image and improve my technique to achieve what I was seeking.

If your camera is equipped with a multiple exposure mode, you should have a few blend modes that are available for you to choose from, try them all as each will produce a different result based on your subject matter and available light. My preference is an average blend due to the results it provides. On another note to quickly access the multiple features, I have it stored in the My Menu feature of the XT-5.

There are no hard and fast camera settings to follow for this type of photography as it’s all down to a matter of taste. I personally use between f/8 and f/14 as I enjoy the visual effect of the architectural details that are overlayed in the images as each time I look at the image I see more and more within it. They can also be photographed with wide apertures, on very sunny days an ND filter of about 3 stops is advisable. Manual camera settings or aperture priority again both work depending on what final effect you are after. Personally, I now lean more towards aperture priority when capturing these as I can spend more time focusing on the effect of the overlayed details within the composition rather than exposure and shutter speed.

Lenses, again this is entirely up to you as different focal lengths yield different results. Using longer focal lengths will require less movement in the camera position/angle to create the desired results. However, with the examples shown here in this article a majority of them were photographed at 16mm, so as you can see it’s down to personal preference.

Technique

There are so many different ways to capture these types of images and it comes down to your own personal preference for the final image and how you tackle it. Two or three exposures might be all you need to get your image, or perhaps in my case anywhere between six and nine images.

Each composition for myself is usually tackled in the same way as I like the visual results it returns. It also depends on how much architectural detail there is to have within the image; more detail, tighter movements, less detail, larger movements.

The image above is indicative of the tighter movement scenario. The red lines indicate the first composition with the main subject being the central building framed by the other two. The purple lines indicate the tighter directional movements of this multiple exposures, and with each one, I try to keep the main subject within the frame. This of course is not always the case as each composition will dictate whether your main subject should stay in frame for all of the shots.

You don’t always have to stay focused on your subject matter, as in the image above, where a series of shots were taken of the architecture and then during the series, I shifted my focus to the river and captured a shot, and then returned for the remaining shots of the buildings. Doing this allowed me to add a slight texture of the water ripples over the entire image.

Editing

To get the final results you are seeking you may want to do quite a bit of post-processing or simply just tweak the colors this is where it is entirely up to you as you are creating a piece of unique photographic artwork. For the image below a simple overlay of the bottom image with a lighten blend mode in Photoshop was all that was required to achieve the painterly effect I was seeking.

As this is your photographic art so to speak, there are no boundaries in how you edit to achieve the final effect. Sure, compositional guidelines are still required to control the viewer’s eye, but the coloring, tonality, and all other elements of editing are derived from your choice. Even touching on the abstract nature of a shot and edit can result in some unique images; which of course are subjective.

The following images are a result of various different basic editing techniques including masking to blend various parts of the same image, flipping an image to create a mirrored effect, and blending two images together.

Give it a Go

Ok, so I’m aware that it might not be for everyone, but at the same time, it might be worth giving it a go if you are in a creative rut. Don’t be afraid to experiment and be creative with your images and compositions. Try different combinations of images, exposures, and blend modes to achieve the results you are after. Push the boundaries and think outside the box as your images could create compelling architectural multiple exposure imagery.

Include people in your images if you are in a busy city as it adds to the visual elements within and helps breathe nuances of life into the surrounding architecture. I don’t do it that often myself but each time I do I find it intriguing as the visual details within the scene obviously increase, and I see more and more interest within the image even if the composition is not that great.

Think about the elements you want to include in your images, considering the placement of lines, shapes, patterns, and reflections as they can add depth and interest to your final composition. Above all though, have fun experimenting.

Camera technology has advanced at a breakneck pace in the last decade, and now, we are on the doorstep of an AI revolution that will cause a fundamental shift in the way we work with, and in some cases, even in the way we create images. And while many of those tools have made our lives easier, they have arguably also sapped creativity from a lot of the craft. Have we lost the fundamental aim of photography? This fantastic video essay discusses the issue.

Coming to you from Craig Roberts of e6 Vlogs, this excellent video essay discusses the issue of obsession with cameras and how we often lose sight of the fundamental craft of creativity because of that. No doubt, cameras are rather nifty gadgets, and it can be a lot of fun to nerd out over them. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that if it makes one happy, but where it often goes wrong is when the pursuit of technology starts to take the place of the creative craft. As much fun as cameras are, at the end of the day, they are the means, not the end. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Roberts.

When I remember being very young, moments of intense happiness stand out – happiness that came from just curling up in bed, or playing a game with friends, or flicking through a book about beachcombing. As I got older, that simple, deep happiness became harder and harder to achieve as new emotions and adult responsibilities settled in. In many ways, my attempts at happiness in adulthood have been attempts to get back to that uncomplicated feeling of relaxation and pleasure.

I think I’ve managed to get closer to it now than I’ve ever been before in adult life, in part by rediscovering past pleasures.

When I was 11 or 12, I’d while away the hours in my room listening to music – normally the Top 40 charts at the weekend, or else catching Hot 97, recording my favourite hits on to a tape and then taking them into school on my Walkman. Just as much as the hits, I enjoyed the snippets of DJ speak, where I’d failed to stop recording quickly enough. To this day I can’t think of Shanice Wilson’s I Love Your Smile without hearing the DJ’s intro and accidental potted history of the song: “If at first you don’t succeed, remix and try again: Shanice Wilson’s I Love Your Smile.”

But in adulthood I went years without making time for music, without giving it space to vibrate through the house. With the stresses of the last couple of years, all that changed. I needed new ways to relax and to clear my head, so I started using a music-streaming service and began to get curious about the songs I used to enjoy, taking musical memory trips via Arrested Development, Crowded House, bossa nova and Jeff Buckley.

Slowly, as my “liked” songs list grew, music became a part of my everyday life again. I felt so silly for abandoning music for so long when playing a favourite tune can do wonders to lift your mood. I now have a singalong playlist – and I take it as a great source of pride that long car journeys have become an opportunity to memorise the words to a song inside out, exactly like I used to do when I was young.

Another childhood rediscovery came in the form of Lego. As a child I had a Lego Space set with lights, and I remember sitting on the floor, delightfully happy, clicking the little bricks together. Fast-forward 30 years and a random article about Lego as a financial investment got me thinking about that one-time toy – and took me down a rabbit hole of the most recent sets. Before I knew it, I was spending the first lockdown putting together the Lego Haunted House with music on and a hot chocolate in my hands. It was bliss and I once again found myself wondering why I ever stopped – why, with things considered childish, we often throw out the baby with the bathwater. It’s not just a childhood toy. It’s a puzzle, it’s time to be creative, its space to focus on something that isn’t a screen. It’s problem solving; it’s being present.

In my early teens, after I was given a camera as a gift, I jumped on my bike and headed to Wimbledon Common and took photos, just for me: photos of trees and wildlife. I was out all day. On my way home I spotted a tree lit up by street lighting and tried to capture its magnificence. Rushing home, I popped the spent films in a special little envelope and sent them off to the developers, desperate to see how they came out. I took many photos then and loved the fact that when you processed your film you got another roll of film back, gently encouraging the hobby (and the payments for processing). As an adult I have always taken photos, but mainly on holidays. I recently bought a new camera, and try to take it everywhere I go, so that even if the day is full and busy, I can snatch some moments for myself to take photos, to observe the world around me.

My study has always been heaving with books and things I’ve accumulated over years spent working. But recently I rearranged it – throwing things out, swapping an assortment of odd boxes for some proper storage. Suddenly, I found I had space in my little room.

This has been unheard of for years: space was always something I carved out by moving things around like shifting tiles in a child’s puzzle game. When this space yawned out in front of me, I knew what I had to do. My larger desk now has room for a dedicated little speaker where I can play music. The wall to my left holds all my camera equipment on display, along with photos I’ve taken. My cameras are always on hand to accompany me on journeys, to allow me time to myself. A corner in my study has a flip-up table where a Lego set – a typewriter this time – is slowly taking shape.

To me, the room represents how I’ve found happiness: by reconnecting to those younger parts of myself I’d forgotten or laid aside, by allowing room in my life for pleasure to exist, and by creating an environment that allows opportunities for delight.

• Joseph Coelho is a British poet and children’s author who was elected children’s laureate in 2022

At no point early in his life did Alex Levac think that photography was his calling. He surely never imagined that he would study photography because of an antisemitic yacht owner who threatened him with a gun.

Well, the backstory starts in 1967. Fresh out of university, the 23-year-old Levac dreamed of Jules Verne-style adventures. He boarded a ship, sailed to Brazil and with an anthropologist friend took photos of Indigenous tribes in the Amazon. The friend did the writing, and Levac – still an amateur – handled the camera. From there it was another journey by ship, to Portugal.

While dreaming that maybe the camera would let him keep traveling forever, he arrived in Lisbon and found himself on a yacht whose owner decided to sail the globe. Levac tagged along.

“But this guy quickly proved to be quite the lunatic,” he smiles. “We did a tour around Morocco and Yemen, and then he just tossed me ashore in Gibraltar. He took out a rifle, started firing in the air, cursed the Jews and threw me off the boat. That’s how I found myself in Gibraltar with 30 British pounds in my pocket, trying to figure out what I was going to do.”

Thirty pounds was also the price at which the British air force was offering night flights to London, where Levac stayed for a month or two with Boaz Davidson, a childhood friend who had just started film school there.

“At some point he told me, ‘Why don’t you stay here and study photography?’” Levac says. “So I went to study photography, completely by chance.”

Over five decades later, and by no chance at all, Levac is considered one of Israel’s leading stills photographers. He has been a celebrity since 1984, when a picture of his in the newspaper Hadashot roiled the country. The photo showed members of the Shin Bet security service leading one of the captured hijackers of a bus – after the agency had said the hijackers had been killed in the freeing of the passengers. Actually, they were executed shortly after the photo was taken. This is what Israelis call the Bus 300 affair.

Levac has developed a unique photographic language that he has been sharing for over three decades in his weekly column in Haaretz’s Hebrew edition. He captures a piece of the local reality that might seem banal at first, but it often reveals cracks in Israeli society. In 2005 Levac became one of only four people to win the Israel Prize for photography.

In a weekly feature that also runs in English, “The Twilight Zone,” he visits the West Bank with Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy to document the iniquities of the occupation. Even today, at 78, you’ll rarely catch Levac without a camera.

He has long since stopped doing news photography, not that he’s out of the loop. In recent weeks he has visited the protests against the Netanyahu government’s attempts to weaken the judiciary, hoping for a choice shot, maybe with a touch of humor.

And at one of the demonstrations it happened: boys kissing a photo of Benjamin Netanyahu displayed on one of their phones, as a large poster of Theodor Herzl – the celebrated visionary of a Jewish state – looks on. The image appeared in Levac’s weekly column.

“That’s what I look for, that combination of elements,” Levac says. “It doesn’t always work out.”

He has accumulated thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of photos over the years, and they’re still piling up. But those that are particularly important to him are the ones that capture the evanescent reality [in Israel] into a framed composition. “It’s very important to me to be connected to what’s happening, and not to take pictures of landscapes and things like that,” he explains.

“What’s important to me is the documentation of our lives, how we look,” he says and immediately afterwards provides a key to viewing his huge body of work.

The late journalist Amos Elon, he says, once told him something that was thoroughly etched in him and has been reverberating for years. “He told me, ‘Alex, listen, you have to photograph the end of this country, its requiem.’ I asked him how I can do that, and he said, ‘Continue to do what you’re doing, but always think about that direction, about how this place is slowly but surely disappearing, changing, turning into something else.’

“He said that to me 30 years ago, and since then it’s become a kind of mantra for me,” says Levac. “So it’s not that I go to a demonstration with an intention of photographing it, but I think that subconsciously I’m always looking for that. I don’t say, ‘Oh, here’s a picture that points to the requiem.’ But when I look at pictures of mine years later, I see that there’s a certain sequence, a documentation of disasters, a story of a certain decadence, of a change that’s taking place here, and not in a positive sense.”

Graphic designer David Tartakover, a friend of Levac’s who has edited two of his books, says that he is “among the few people I knew who goes to work in the street every day. He has a weekly deadline, and the street is his studio. He doesn’t stage things, but rather he records from his point of view. He’s a great humanist, and that’s reflected in the photos of course.

“When you walk in the street with him, you’re both at the same angle, the same point of view, but he sees the thing that’s unusual, that stands out and that’s exceptional. Alex is like the body camera worn by policemen, which records everything they see, but from a very original point of view. And of course he is politically aware, in two election campaigns he appeared on the Meretz slate of Knesset candidates, and that’s a statement.”

Projecting yourself onto a photo

The tight connection between Levac’s work and the Israeli story is also evident in the new Hebrew-language documentary “Alex’s Group,” which explores the power of visual images. In Yonatan Nir’s film, debuting in Israel on Yes Docu on Memorial Day, Levac, psychiatrist Adi Doron and photo therapist Essie Haus provide photo therapy for people battling combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder. Some are suffering because of the struggles of a loved one like a partner, father or son.

Levac helps them discuss the pain. They look at his photos, pick one that touches them personally, and explain their choice and their trauma. We see men and women, religious and secular, people from the center of the country and people from the outskirts as the PTSD seeps from the personal to the national.

“I entered their world,” Levac says. “I had no idea what these people go through day after day, hour by hour. I don’t know how significant my contribution was, but a group dynamic developed. Photography opened them up. … Suddenly I realized how much power a photograph has.

“In the workshop I realized the extent to which people can project something of themselves onto a photo, so it becomes something that’s theirs, depending on what they see.”

The confessions in the film are poignant, to say the least.

“Outside they look like you and me, but what they go through every moment of their lives is unbelievable,” Levac says. “And it’s also unbelievable that our society doesn’t really address it at all.”

He mentions, Itzik Saidian, who has been suffering from PTSD since he fought in the 2014 Gaza war. In 2021 he set himself on fire in front of the Defense Ministry.

Levac says Saidian “had to burn himself alive to bring awareness to it, even though his injury is, after all, a direct result of how we live here. We as a society forced these people into these traumatic situations, and now we don’t do enough to help them get out of it.”

In the film you also talk about your own trauma, how during your military service you played Russian roulette with friends, one of whom shot himself. You say that your entire attitude toward guns and the army changed.

“I’m not comparing that to the trauma of the people who took part in the workshop; it doesn’t affect me the same way. … But yes, occasionally I go back to that. The guy who shot himself was a good friend of mine, and that really changed everything for me. I was discharged from the army early because of that. … I actually wanted to be a combat soldier. But after that story my romance with the army was over.”

You’ve certainly photographed your share of military situations, weapons, violence and killing; how has this affected you?

“These things are part of you even if you aren’t aware of them. I’m obsessed with taking pictures of people in the street with guns. Israel is the only country in the world where you see people walking around with guns so much, and not necessarily soldiers; civilians too.”

Do you feel you’re already at the end stage?

“Yes, to a certain degree.”

What do you think is the most significant thing you’re leaving behind?

“I’d like people to view my pictures as a kind of puzzle, lots of pieces that together create a picture of Israeliness as I see it. Aside from aesthetics and composition, photography has to add value, some kind of statement. I hope that anyone who looks at my pictures will understand how I see things here – with a bit of humor and a bit of sadness.”

All of us near death

Levac was born in Tel Aviv in 1944 and studied at the Tel Nordau School there. After the army he studied philosophy and psychology at Tel Aviv University, then came his worldwide travels and study in London.

In 1981, after 14 years around the world, he returned to Israel. He settled in Ashkelon on the southern coast, took pictures of an urban renewal project and moonlighted by photographing weddings and doing public relations jobs.

He also occasionally took photos for the monthly Monitin and the weekly Anashim. When he was offered a full-time job at the daily Hadashot he took the plunge.

“The truth is, I was a bit afraid because in this work you have responsibility and you’re judged every day,” he says. “Every day they look at your pictures and say that you’re a good photographer or that you’re not good. Every day you have to rethink. To this day I get nervous about that.”

In addition to his Israel Prize, he has won awards from the then-Education and Culture Ministry, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and the Israel Museum. He has published books and staged exhibitions, and he lectures on photography and leads workshops.

There’s a contradiction between the awards and honors showered on him and his modesty and self-criticism. For example, he doesn’t deny the issues with “The Twilight Zone.”

“The problem with this column, as Gideon says, is that nobody reads it, and anybody who actually does read it doesn’t pay much attention to it. I can understand that, because how much can you read about the injustices of the occupation?” he says.

“We go there every week and each time we encounter that experience of bereavement, of these people’s pain, and there’s no burnout because each time it’s strong and affects me and I want others to read it. But it’s repetitious. That’s the banality of death, of the occupation; it’s no longer interesting no matter how well you write, no matter how good the photo is.”

It’s been many years since you were a news photographer, but in the film you tell the people in the workshop about that period of your career, about how you would arrive at the scene of a disaster and find yourself searching the horror for the aesthetic of a shot.

“That happens a lot to photojournalists. I’m not the only one who tries, from the suffering, pain and disaster, to create an attractive shot, which is absurd. But apparently it’s unavoidable. You don’t tell yourself: ‘Okay, it’s a terrible event, I’ll take an ugly shot.’ No, because you want to show how good you are.”

In a combat zone or the aftermath of a terror attack or disaster, there’s greater potential for a strong shot.

“True. But when I got home I’d suddenly think about what I saw and how I took a picture, how I climbed a tree to get a better shot of people who were blown up half an hour earlier. The worst was at funerals, because everybody shot close-ups of family members at the grave, especially during the Lebanon war.

“And then the Press Council decided that there would be no more close-ups at open graves, but this lasted a day or two, because the editors said, ‘We need strong shots of people crying,’ and then everybody starting taking pictures again.

“I remember that a bus was blown up in Jerusalem, and I went with a few photographers to a nearby balcony, looked around and suddenly saw limbs hanging on a tree – a hand, a finger. I started shooting that and then said, ‘Enough, I can’t do this.’ And I stopped right then. But as you say, the strongest news photos are full of blood, sweat and tears.”

Why is that?

“I’ve thought about that many times, and I think it’s the proximity to death. After all, we all die at some point, and photos like that bring us a little closer to that moment.

“Once I was in a car with [journalist] Zvi Gilat on a day of demonstrations, shooting and deaths in the village of Anabta near Tul Karm [in the West Bank] in 1988. We were stopped, and I said, ‘Wow, now they’re going to mow us down.’ But no, they pulled me out of the car and said, ‘Photograph this,’ and I took a picture [of two Palestinians who had been killed]. And because I was standing in front of the light, a picture came out that, in terms of lighting, is a bit Rembrandt.”

But your most famous picture was actually taken when the person was still alive, a moment before they killed him. The photo of the terrorist from the Bus 300 affair revealed a hidden truth. That’s the dream of every photojournalist.

“Suddenly I became famous. Suddenly everybody knew who Alex Levac was. That was very flattering. You know, a scoop is a scoop; there aren’t many scoops in photography, especially one that changed the Shin Bet [security service] and caused a crisis in the government. To this day they teach it at university, and the Shin Bet even invited me a few times to lecture about it.

“So yes, it made me famous, but there’s always the fear that you’ll be remembered as a one-picture photographer. Some people say, ‘How much money did you get for that, you traitor?’ And others say, ‘Good for you for shooting that.’ But I shot it simply because I was there. I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t know what I would be shooting. I didn’t even know that I was taking a picture of one of the guys who hijacked the bus. I had absolutely no idea.

“Today a photo like that wouldn’t receive such coverage, it wouldn’t cause an uproar. Back then society was different. Whenever a Palestinian was wounded by a soldier’s fire, it would be investigated.”

People have quite often just vacated Ian Howorth’s pictures. English people. They have left behind clues as to the way they live, the language of the tribe. This image is on the opening page of his new book, A Country Kind of Silence, and offers some ideas of what will follow.

What can be learned from it? Might we see a loneliness in the single bottle of Coke, unfinished, its label picked at nervously? Is that anxiety confirmed or denied by the ashtray full of fag ends, too many for one sitting? The Carling logo threatens to locate the scene in a particular time and place – the pub garden tables of the 1970s, for those of us who remember them. But the Coke bottle is plastic, pastiching the iconic glass, so this is a tired reminder of that already tired decade. Still, the soft cocktail hour light draws us in. We might think we know it from a hundred adverts – “the real thing” – but the Coke dregs, the unscrewed cap, the unemptied ashtray, don’t want to sell us anything. It might not even be sundown, but a relic of an early morning after.

Howorth, who is based in Brighton, has an uncanny, tragicomic eye for these details. He conjures an idea of England from abandoned phone boxes and the facades of retirement bungalows; from caravan parks and portable TV sets and dusty cars in lock-up garages and empty deck chairs in concrete yards. He knows us by our wipe-clean tablecloths and abandoned paddling pools and velour car seat covers. Certain colours are crucial to his compositions, to the emotion of them. As another imagist poet, the American William Carlos Williams, might have observed here: so much depends upon the red Coke bottle top, on the grey bench seat, above the gravel footpath.

• A Country Kind of Silence by Ian Howorth is published by Setanta Books (£50)

“Linda put you at your ease,” Paul McCartney told The Guardian in a 2019 interview. He was speaking about his late wife, Linda McCartney, and her work as a photographer. His comments about her work offer plenty of insights into her decades behind the camera — pointing to her work photographing everyone from music legends to ordinary people, as well as her skill at her craft. “One of the great things about Linda was she knew when to click,” he said in the same interview.

Now, a retrospective covering Linda McCartney’s decades of work as a photographer has come to the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona. That choice of venues is no accident; she began photographing while a student there in the early 1960s. The Linda McCartney Retrospective includes close to 200 images covering a wide range of subjects; it’s up now and is set to run through August 5 of this year.

“Linda carried a camera with her most of the time capturing images in an instinctive way which left her subjects feeling totally comfortable with the process,” said Paul McCartney in a statement. “She loved to explore and found ways to make her art joyous and innovative at the same time.”

Writing at The Washington Post, Karen Peterson provided some welcome historical context regarding Linda McCartney’s work — including the fact that she was the first female photographer to have her work used on the cover of Rolling Stone. (Specifically, a portrait of Eric Clapton on a 1968 issue.) As Peterson notes, the exhibit is also a reminder that Linda McCartney’s creative work predated her meeting her future spouse.

Consider the exhibit a kind of homecoming, then — or a reminder of one artist’s impressive range.

Every single time that we’ve done Fujifilm camera reviews, we have to do portraits. I mean, come on! How do you hate on film simulations? Well, this time around we went into our reviews index to find the greatest. And in this roundup, we’re curating the best Fujifilm cameras for portrait photography. Plus, there are sample galleries in this post. You’re going to love it!

The Phoblographer’s various product round-up features are done in-house. Our philosophy is simple: you wouldn’t get a Wagyu beef steak review from a lifelong vegetarian. And you wouldn’t get photography advice from someone who doesn’t touch the product. We only recommend gear we’ve fully reviewed in these roundups. If you’re wondering why your favorite product didn’t make the cut, there’s a chance it’s on another list. If we haven’t reviewed it, we won’t recommend it. This method keeps our lists packed with industry-leading knowledge. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

How We Chose the Best Fujifilm Cameras for Portrait Photography

Here’s some insight into how and why we chose these as the best Fujifilm cameras for portrait photography.

• Our roundups only prominently feature products that we’ve done full reviews of. With that said, within each section of this roundup, you’ll find links back to our full reviews of the products. So you can know that we really believe that these are the best Fujifilm cameras for portrait photography because we’ve tested them.
• All the product images and sample photos were shot by our staff.
• The best Fujifilm cameras for portrait photography all put film simulations at the forefront. Our staff likes Classic Chrome, Classic Negative, Pro Negative HC, and Astia the most.
• Classic Chrome was originally designed to mimic the look of photos that you’d see in National Geographic. And therefore, it kind of looks like Kodachrome.
• Classic Negative is designed to look more like Superia. I recommend overexposing it to get that more pastel look that photographers love.
• Pro Negative HC is designed to mimic the look of their old Pro Negative 160 ISO film. It’s great for studio work.
• Astia balances a vivid look with slightly softer colors. We really think that it’s fantastic.
• With the best Fujifilm cameras for portrait photography, use face and eye detection.

Fujifilm XH2

Here are the pros and cons from our full review:

PROS

• Very quiet
• Fantastic image quality
• High ISO images are fairly clean, or you can embrace the noise.
• The best color from an APSC sensor in a while
• Subject detection is great in sufficient lighting.
• Weather resistant
• Good for street photography
• Alright battery life
• Still works well with older lenses
• Cropped shooting mode in continuous drive mode is brilliant. (Let me get it right in camera and frame it perfectly there rather than fixing it later.)
• Continuous AF is great in good lighting.
• Very good at 10pm for tracking birds

CONS

• I miss the ISO dial so much.
• Desperately needs to find a way to make switching between subjects faster
• Rolling shutter in pre-shot ES
• I wish it had more customizable buttons.
• Fuji needs to update how their focusing modes work.
• Star ratings don’t transfer over to Capture one or Lightroom.
• Continuous AF isn’t so great in low lighting.
• Fuji needs to update their AF-C customization modes.
• Autofocus performance deteriorates with exposure preview on and lots of underexposure.
• High ISO editing versatility isn’t all that great, but for wildlife it really needs to be.
• Fuji currently lacks a major selection of fast telephoto lenses, and they really need them.

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Fujifilm GFX 50s II

Here are the pros and cons from our full review:

PROS

• Beautiful image quality
• Colors and film simulations
• In-camera skin smoothing transfers to raw file
• It cuts down on editing time
• Dynamic Range
• Addition of IBIS
• Small camera body for medium format

CONS

• Autofocus can be sluggish
• Although it’s improved, face detection can still be improved upon
• Quick AF mode quickly drains the battery
• Not a lot of fast lens options in the current lens lineup

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Fujifilm GFX 100s

Here are the pros and cons from our full review:

PROS

• The build quality is much better than the GFX100
• Weather sealing
• The new IBIS system is excellent
• Good autofocus in good light
• More detail in images than anyone could ever want
• Great performance up to ISO 6400
• The film sims are great as always. Nostalgic Neg is a nice inclusion
• Nice grip and a well-placed thumb rest round out great ergonomics
• Excellent price point for a ‘more than Full-frame’ camera (it’s $5,999)

CONS

• Still no touchscreen menu system
• Mediocre battery life
• 400MP Hi-Res image mode is meh
• While the EVF is nice, it’s a step back from the GFX100

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