Personal Best vol.20 | Luca Bracali

29.03.2019

Written by... Luca Bracali

He has travelled to 145 countries, is author of 14 books and winner of 14 prizes in International photographic competitions. Since 2008 he is a member of Apecs (Association of Polar Early Career Scientists) and since 2015 he cooperates with IASC (International Arctic Science Commitee) for his contributions about environment published in the media. In 2009 he was the only reporter to reach the geographic North Pole on skis. In 2010 Bracali debuted in the world of fine-art photography and his pictures have been on show, as solo exhibitions, in museums and galleries in Rome, Sofia, Kiev, Odessa, Copenaghen, Yangon, Montreal and New York, but also in Bruxelles, in the headquarter of European Parliament. He signed 210 services as tv director for RAI 1, lately became documentary filmmaker for RAI 2 and RAI 3 and was a guest on 50 programs and TG news aired on Rai networks as an explorer and a story-teller. Eighteen of his last reportages have been published on National Geographic and his pictures has been also featured on New York Post, USA Today Post, Fox News, Lens Culture, PetaPixel, Daily Express, Daily Star, Daily Telegraph and The Sun. From 2017 he became ambassador for life of the non-profit organization “Save the Planet”. The Minor Planet Center in Cambridge dedicated to his name the 198.616th asteroid discovered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luca_Bracali

Dear Fuji friends, I got the chance to test since last April the new X-T2 on the occasion of some of my recent photo reports and video documentaries. In Ireland in May, in Scotland in June and in Alaska in August. In 30 years of my job with 138 countries visited, I have specialized in travel photography and nature in all its nuances and meanings, and landscapes, faces and animals.

From 2013 I'm Fujifilm ambassador, among the first in Italy, using some top models including the X-Pro1, the X-E2, the X-T1 and X-Pro2. And never like this time, using the X-T2 fact, I had the distinct feeling of having an object in my hands capable of scoring a staple in this furious chase technology.

But what are the strengths of this super-mirrorless?

In practical terms, for example photographing the hexagonal rocks of the Giant's Causewy or those overlooking the Cliff of Moher, the prehistoric settlements of the Aran islands such as the Orkney, the readability of the plot, the rock texture, as the delicate shadow / highlight tones of the stones, they have always been clean and precise, giving the image the same color as the shooting scene. Above all, not being a post-production lover at all, I leave the camera settings as default for color, contrast, saturation and dynamic range because I feel they are more than satisfactory to me.

At high ISO response is good, the noise is very poor even in shaded areas and, wherever it appears, remains therefore very uniform, so in night photography, without any tripod, it become a tangible benefit.

We come now to autofocus, always one of the weakest point of mirrorless camera, but with the X-T2 is done you can easily change your mind. The 91 focus points expandable to 325, unlikely giving up the target, both in tracking or panning shooting and in the heart of Katmai, as in Denali reserve, they have perfectly done their duty.

I want to conclude my impressions spending a few words on the video of this new flagship, the first X Series to support 4K video recordings, with a 100 Mbps bitrate. The video image quality it is quite remarkable in my opinion, both in the contrast that in a very detailed texture, with 9 available film effects. And to give you an idea of the quality, I aired two of my stories entirely shot with the X-T2 in Ireland and Scotland on Easy Driver, the weekly column of Rai 1 (main italian tv network) where I'm working as director. And I can assure you, but you can easily realize by yourself watching the episodes on Rai Replay, that comparing a 30.000 euro XD-Cam that we usually use to film this stories and the X-T2 camera there is no quality difference, infact three of my colleagues, have enjoyed much more the quality of this small mirrorless which also has the HDMI output so you can record 4K movie onto external HD without any compression ratio.

Gears:

FUJIFILM X-H1
FUJIFILM X-Pro2
FUJIFILM X-T2
FUJIFILM X-T1
XF10-24mmF4 R OIS
XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR
XF50-140mmF2.8 R LM OIS WR
XF100-400mmF4.5-5.6 R LM OIS WR

Arctic. A world to discover

In 2003, after visiting Antarctica for the first time, I began developing a “green conscience” without belonging to any political party or joining any environmental movements.

At that time, there was discussion of of the hole in the ozone layer, first discovered at Antarctica’s Vernadksy Research Base where I went to cover my first assignment with a more scientific focus. I found myself wanting to know more – to fully understand how accurate the journalists’ reports were and whether the earth was truly in danger. Sadly, I came to realize, the warnings were accurate and dire then and even more so now.

Hudson Bay, Canada. Mother bear and cub, walking in an unusually unfrozen Hudson Bay that should be totally ice-covered this time of year. Instead of a seal, she’s eating a crab.
Svalbard island. During late summer when bears typically haven’t eaten for months, they are costantly seeking for food and seem losing their energy even while walking.

It is the Arctic and Antarctic regions, after all, that are most sensitive to climate change. They are known as the beating heart of our planet – and it was from these remote and boundless regions that the first cry of planetary alarm was sounded.

Hudson Bay, Canada. On Bryan’s property bears and dogs live together, sharing the same area. Bears are often used to playing with the dogs, hugging them and unsuccesfully trying to scare them (check the dog’s tail!).
Svalbard island. Infallible swimmer. After having climbed onto a slab of ice in the middle of the frozen sea, the bear starts sniffing for food.

Five years after that first trip I went to Canada, followed by Alaska in 2008 to work on my personal project “Arctic Sun on my Path” where I spent 35 days in the tundra to photograph polar bear pups as they emerged from their dens for the first time. The expedition and research was also aimed at studying global warming and the impacts on delicate arctic ecosystems.

Hudson Bay, Canada. A snowstorm foretells that the Hudson Bay will soon freeze. In few days, the bears will start their march.
Hudson Bay, Canada. When a nearby lake begins freezing, polar bears can finally walk on their favourite surface.

In the following years I deepened my research working alongside American scientists, then Russians and finally Italians. I documented and photographed the permafrost in Alaska, the ice at the geographic North Pole and samples of air aerosols at the Svalbard islands – and I was among the first photojournalists allowed to enter and document the usually inaccessible Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

Hudson Bay, Canada. Bears are used to fighting almost every day. For fun, food or to compete for a female.

Carbon pollution is immensely destructive to the earth, yet man never tires of producing it in every form, through every possible and imaginable means.

Hudson Bay, Canada. These shots worth more than every word on the subject, even for nonbelievers of global warming.

Photography is an essential practice for me, not only as a means of expression, but also and above all, communication. Through the evocative power of photography, the most universal language that exists, I am able to convey experiences and emotions that allow me to bring about greater understanding and deeper respect for our planet and each other. Through photography, I can speak directly to the hearts of all people, inspiring joy and sparking important conversations across cultures and languages.

Godafoss, Iceland. As temperatures rise, frozen waterfalls such as Godafoss will show another face.

In spite of what is happening to our planet, my style is to always show the beautiful side of nature and never the destruction – to focus on the earth’s grandeur and beauty that remains, preserving in images what may soon be lost to greed.

Jokulsarlon, Iceland. It looks like a wonderful show but it’s actually nature’s disaster. At Diamond Beach, thousands of icebergs once gathered every year as a result of Vatnajokull, Europe’s biggest glacier, which is constantly losing ice. It has lost 100 meters annually over the past 80 years.

Within twenty years the world will no longer be the same, but the evocative force of photography will continue to tell us the story. The arctic and its silent sovereignty of the ice will soon become a memory.

Ballstad, Lofoten islands. It took two hundred shots to get a star trail image with northern lights like this. Rather than opening the shutter speed for over 1 hour in a cold climate, it’s recommended that you use the built-in interval-timer function on the X and GFX series.

After 27 years of photography with SLRs, I decided to sell all of my gear in 2013 (a set worth 40,000 euros that included everything from 8 to 800mm) in order to challenge myself with mirrorless. I knew then that mirrorless represented the future and I recognized that starting earlier, when many remained skeptical about this new camera technology, would give me a critical advantage by forcing me to adapt quickly to a new style of travel and photography. I started with the X-Pro1, then with X-E2, then the X-T1, the X-T2 and the X-T3, but also the X-H1 and the GFX 50S. Regarding optics, I use the XF8-16, the XF16-55, the XF50-140, XF100-400 — and sometimes the XF16mmF1.4 and XF56mmF1.2. I love the H1 for stability on a 5-axis that is useful in still photography and extraordinary for shooting video. I like the T3 for the back-light sensor and for night shots and, especially for capturing the aurora borealis, as it offers a welcome advantage. I love the GFX series with which I photographed Norway’s Lofoten Archipelago, as well as Iceland. The stunning quality achieved with this medium format camera made me realize that I had arrived at another critical point in the realm of gear. And I would need to convert again!

Svalbard island. Nordenskjøldbree is a perennial glacier. The hidden ice caves near its bay are truly a revelation. The ceiling is covered with a thousand blue bubbles. Because oxygen is trapped in the ice crystals, the diaphanous light spreads and is reflected in every direction.

Disko Bay, Greenland. Eqip Sermia is considered a “calving glacier” precisely because ice blocks of various sizes come off much more frequently than on other glaciers.

Disko Bay, Greenland. At its deepest known measurement the Jakobshavns Glacier was recorded at 2,500 meters deep, but in the last 10 years it has dropped by 100 meters and retreated by 15 kilometers.

Disko Bay, Greenland. The gigantic sculptures of ice appear motionless in the sea. In actuality, the icebergs are moving at speeds of 17 kilometers per day.

Gears:

Arctic. A world to discover

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