FS RECIPE for rich, impactful results in the outdoors
For traveling outdoor photographer Dominic Stone, photography is a way to ‘engage with the mystery of life’ that surrounds him. Dominic’s work, which puts him in the heart of the action at major surfing and running competitions, is a reflection of his own deepest passions. It’s an exchange with the natural world – one he’s been having since long before he ever picked up a camera.
Recently, Dom created a custom FS RECIPE on FUJIFILM X-E5, using the famously saturated Velvia as his foundation. The process was an exploration of tension that blended Velvia’s vibrancy with a softer, more subtle mood to create images that feel beautiful and impactful. The result is a genuinely personal take on color.
An Intuitive Leap into Photography
Dominic admits that he used to despise the beach, associating it with hot sand and long family car rides. But that changed when a 1940s-era beach cottage joined his family, providing a foundation for a relationship with the ocean. It was there that his love for surfing began. “Once I stood on a surfboard for the first time, I never looked back,” he says.
Yet, it wasn’t until he was 26 years old that a camera found its way into his hands. With a bit of money saved and a few weeks to spare before starting a master’s program, he walked into a camera store.
Dominic began documenting surf photography, and a chance encounter at a local longboard contest led to a sponsorship for a waterproof housing. Suddenly, he was in the water, creating the perspectives he had grown up romanticizing in magazines.
“I remember the first session I swam out with my camera; I don’t think I’ll ever forget it,” he says.
Crafting a Softer Velvia Film Simulation
Dominic’s creative style has an appreciation for color, so he was excited to build a FS RECIPE from Velvia’s base with X-E5.
While he was confident that it would work perfectly for landscapes, he was curious to see how it would render the blues of the ocean. His goal was to balance the Film Simulation’s intensity with a gentle touch, letting its personality shine through without creating an ‘overcooked’ image.
He describes his FS RECIPE choices.
“To bring a bit of softness to an image that I expected to have stronger contrast than I’m used to, I knew I wanted to reduce the CLARITY in my FS RECIPE.
“I lifted the blacks just a touch to really lean into that softness, sort of working in tension with Velvia’s character.”
Finally, he reduced the overall saturation slightly while adding a strong COLOR CHROME EFFECT for the blues. The aim was to create a FS RECIPE that was ‘subtle yet steadfast in its impact’.
Dominic views his finished photos as a kind of Trojan horse, ‘being pretty and easy on the eyes at first, but unleashing something with a bit more impact once we’ve softened enough to receive it’.
Straight-Out-of-Camera Freedom
Creating a finished look in-camera was an engaging and freeing experience for Dominic. “As soon as I decided on my FS RECIPE, I made sure my camera was only making a single image at a time,” he notes, compared to his usual burst mode preference.
The entire process, the feel of the camera, the view through the EVF, and his custom FS RECIPE encouraged him to slow down and be intentional with his composition.
This approach stands in contrast to his typical workflow of creating with RAW files and pulling details from the shadows in post-production. Dominic found the process of creating a straight-out-of-camera image he was happy with ‘really liberating’.
“I love editing, but it was nice just to transfer a photo to my phone wirelessly and have it ready to go,” he says. It’s a method Dominic sees lending itself to photojournalism, travel, and even providing real-time turnaround at competitions using X-E5.
Going Beyond the Image
What keeps Dominic inspired is a perspective that life and art are a ‘conversation with the unseen and unknowable’. For him, every moment is an expression of something flowing through us.
Dominic’s goal is not just to make a picture, but ‘to create imagery which will somehow translate the ineffable and transcend our concepts of self, to strike us deeply at our core’. The only way to achieve that, he believes, is to continue the dialogue with nature.
That’s what keeps him going.
By taking the legendary look of Velvia and carefully molding it to fit his vision, Dominic crafted a look uniquely his. Creating a finished image directly in-camera gave him the freedom to stay in the moment and focus on the story he wanted to tell, one frame at a time.
Dominic Stone’s “Pacifica 100” FS RECIPE
FILM SIMULAITON: Velvia
MONOCHROMATIC COLOR: N/A
GRAIN EFFECT: STRONG, SMALL
COLOR CHROME EFFECT: WEAK
COLOR CHROME FX BLUE: STRONG
SMOOTH SKIN EFFECT: OFF
WHITE BALANCE: AUTO / R +2, B -2
DYNAMIC RANGE: DR100
D RANGE PRIORITY: OFF
TONE CURVE: H 0, S +2.5
COLOR: -1
SHARPNESS: 0
HIGH ISO NR: +1
CLARITY: -2
