ON THE COUCH – ep 20, part 1 – Kamil Tamiola, Tom Barnes & Lucas Gilman (pro photographers)

by Nino LeitnerOctober 25^th, 2014

Watch previous episodes of ON THE COUCH & ON THE GO by clicking here! Visit our Vimeo and YouTube playlists, and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes!

In episode 20 of ON THE COUCH, I talked to professional photographers Kamil Tamiola, Tom Barnes and Lucas Gilman. We had a very engaging discussion about their work and the present and future of photography, filmmaking and imaging in general. Thanks to one of our main sponsors G-Technology, we were able to assemble a full couch of “G-Team” brand ambassadors (including yours truly) for this taping in our beautiful suite during Photokina 2014 in Cologne.

Asked about their current projects, Kamil talked about his campaign for Phase One which he is shooting on their medium format digital cameras in extreme altitudes on top of the highest peaks of this planet. He mentioned how much he is actually relying on advances in technology when it comes to resolution and especially dynamic range – having extremely overblown highlights as well as dark shadows in just one image. Watch Kamil’s full behind the scenes promo video for his Mont Blanc Phase One Campaign at the bottom.

Tom Barnes is best known for his portraits of bands and musicians, and has a large body of work in that field and many years of experience. He talked about about a production for Channel 4 called “Don’t Stop the Music”, produced by Jamie Oliver’s production company, which tries to get children into learning musical instruments again after public funding in the UK for that was cut.

Lucas Gilman is also known for his extreme outdoor and nature photography recently shot the campaign for the new Nikon D810 DSLR in some beautiful locations. See the Behind-the-scenes video at the bottom of this post. Lucas mentions the built-in timelapse function in the Nikon D810 which sounds actually quite amazing for filmmakers, because it takes a lot of work away from post production, being able to assemble those timelapses right in camera.

The first part of our discussion focused on the photography revolution that took part over the past 10 years with digital technology really becoming the massively dominant way of taking photos, with film fading away much quicker than anyone anticipated. We talked about how jobs changed because of the technology and how photography has gotten anywhere … also turning a professional photographer’s world upside down.

We touched on how this revolution is still taking place in filmmaking and cinematography, and how we are currently experiencing that megapixel hype that the photography industry is already done with – there, now it’s about dynamic range and color rendition and not only the higher megapixel counts at all costs.

In part 2 of this episode to be published next week, we will talk about photographers who are moving into video and cinematography, and what they need to be aware of. Also, we talk more about advances in camera technology and what that actually means creatively.

Watch all other episodes of ON THE COUCH so far by clicking here!