October 1st, 2018 at 6:30 am (Motherwell, Scotland)

By Derek Clark

This week has been a struggle due to my ongoing back pain, which just seems to be getting worse. I had a shoot a few days ago for another CD cover, although I can’t share any pictures of that at this point. But the X-T3 performed flawlessly, never missing focus once, even though the room was pretty dark towards the end of the seven-hour shoot.

Yesterday we took the kids for a bit of indoor climbing and then an obstacle course fifty feet in the air. It gets them away from screens for a while and lets them blow of some steam too.

It’s October 1st and I can feel the cold setting in. Puffer jackets are back on the streets and leaves are everywhere. Winter is well on the way, and after the snow last year, I promised myself the Audi will be gone and another Land Rover will take its place. I’ll make a start on it this week.

Happy Monday everyone.

30 SEPTEMBER 2018 AT 15:37 PM (MALMESBURY, ENGLAND)

BY KEVIN MULLINS

This is very much a lame post today I’m afraid.

As you know, Chronicle is supposed to be about our “now” - not cherry picked images from our archive to rose tint the glasses.

And so, my friends, this is my now.

Exhausted.

As many of you know, Bert, Pat, Jonas and I have been at Photokina this last week.

Pat, Bert and Jonas were there for the whole time, while I had to leave on Friday to head to the South of France to shoot a wedding yesterday.

I won’t go into the long details, but my 48 hours since leaving Cologne have included;

A delayed trains
A delayed plane
A 14 Hour wedding shoot (lovely, by the way)
Another delayed plane.
An assault on a plane (I wasn’t involved, but we all got held up)
A delayed bus
A long traffic jam.

I’ve just waled in through the door and realised that Sunday is my day in terms of Chronicle.

I’ve done no more than download a few snaps from my X70 I’m afraid ….. hopefully normal service will resume next week …… though I have a double header wedding next week so I’ll have to think it through.

Have a great week everybody.

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29 September 2018 at 8:52 am (Cologne, Germany)

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BY BERT STEPHANI

I’m so proud and grateful that I was asked to speak for Fujifilm at Photokina again. They have let me play with the GFX50R, I get copious quantities of food and beer. On top of that, they even pay me for taking some pictures on a stage for 40 minutes each day, using cheap IKEA stuff as modifiers. I’m in a nice hotel and I get to hang out with friends and heroes. And yet it’s hard, exhausting and relentless. The stress to be on stage, the intensity of the conversations, the e-mails that have to be answered, the late nights and the ever present noise are getting to me. Yesterday Pat and I took it easy, went for dinner in the hotel restaurant and added some extra hours of rest to our schedule. Today is the last day, one more presentation and I intend to squeeze the last drop out of the friendships that will become virtual again from tomorrow on.

27 September 2018 at 9:33 pm (Surry Hills, Australia)

27 September 2018 at 9:33 pm (Surry Hills, Australia)

I’ve been noticing the sun, this week - well, on the clear days at least, I have.

The sun, its effects, its surrogates - we miss it when its gone, we replace it with whatever we can find, we wait for it to come back; and in the mean time, we make do…

September 25, 2018 at 12:15 PM (Cologne, Germany)

By Patrick La Roque

We’re here. Last night I crashed around 5:45 PM—I looked like a wreck and felt 85 years-old. I’d been existing in a half-reality for most of the day, everything around me becoming increasingly fluid.

These are from Bert’s place, a few hours after landing. Quick shots with the new GFX 50R, quickly edited on my iPad with Snapseed. Indoors stuff...because it’s all still a “secret” as I write these words. Not for long though.

Next up: the press conference, a rehearsal and an evening out.
Photokina it is.

September 26, 2018 at 07:33 pm (Cologne, Germany)

Photography and words by Jonas Rask

Seeing old friends, making new ones.
This is the part I like.
This is what brings a smile to my face.
The rest resembles a charade

September 24, 2018 at 15:50 pm (Motherwell, Scotland)

“But I knew that someday I was going to die. And just before I died two things would happen; Number 1: I would regret my entire life. Number 2: I would want to live my life over again.”
— Hubert Selby Jr

That quote by Hubert Selby Jr made a big impact when I first heard it many years ago and it has stayed with me ever since. It’s been rattling around my head recently, thanks to this Chronicle 90 project that we are currently on. I’m sure all 7 of us (our eighth member will join us at the end of the project) have analyzed our lives through this experience and most have realized just how uneventful our lives are. Sure we can all blog about the exciting things that happen once in a blue moon, but mostly it just feels like putting your foot to the floor in first gear while sitting in a carpark full of snow. But I know I will want to do it all again someday.

This week: Kids on holiday, but with plenty of homework, Lots of driving, a trip to the cinema, a storm that caused a fair bit of damage, a notebook that just isn’t filling up as fast as it used to, and of course the X-T3. But now it’s time to hit publish on this post and start prepping my gear for tomorrows shoot.

SEPTEMBER 23, 2018 AT 20:38PM (BRISTOL, ENGLAND)

BY KEVIN MULLINS

Today I found myself watching a different kind of humanity.

A set of people so driven, so focused and so together, that it made me wonder just how on earth do the terrible things in the world ever happen.

Today I was the “behind the scenes” photographer at a half marathon and my remit was to capture the emotion, the happiness, the sadness, the turmoil, the struggles, the pains of running twelve and a half miles.

I run myself - quite a bit, and I’ve run marathons before (though a long time ago). Before I started shooting I thought “I reckon I could do this again at my grand old age”.

Then, as the last of the runners crossed the START line, the ones that left first, crossed the FINISH line. Around an hour it took them.

The human body is an incredible thing and for all our failings, we seem to be able to forge a togetherness, a stoic attitude to completion.

Some of course found it easier than others. Some found it too much and would never finish.

Others, like tetraplegic Tom have much greater struggles in life yet still face every challenge with a smile.

People are ace.

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September 22, 2018 at 11:16PM (Zaventem, Belgium)

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BY BERT STEPHANI

It hasn’t been a good week. I can see in my photography that it took a lot of energy. Even an exciting new camera, doesn’t push me to create. But today was good, not in a creative way but I got to spend it with my kids and a good friend that I don’t get to see very often. It opens up my mind and I know that with Photokina coming up, the creative juices will start flowing again soon.

20 September 2018 at 10:28 pm (Surry Hills, Australia)

20 September 2018 at 10:28 pm (Surry Hills, Australia)

It’s not that I’ve led a double life. Not really.

It’s more like several, sequential, sometimes-overlapping (but often not) lives.

I was back in Canada recently, where my parents are (finally) starting to think about moving out of the home I grew up in.

But the side effect of that is, everything in the house has to go someplace else; so the things I left behind, when I went overseas “for a year” (in 1996), now need to be dealt with, sorted through, decided on. And, being a filer - someone who files things - I could hardly just throw everything out.

So one of those bags that came back from that trip was full of paper - and now it’s here. And it still needs to be dealt with…