Yesterday, Sunday 2nd August, I finally got to meet the wonderful Jean-François Léger in person, and it's one of those days I know I'll still be thinking about a long time from now.
We've been friends online for a while. It started in the comments on my YouTube channel, then he began joining in with the weekly lives I used to do, and when I set up the communities he came across to those as well.
Over the last year or so we've talked on live calls, back and forth in the community, and on one to one video chats, and somewhere in all of that we stopped being two people who recognised each other's names and became genuinely good friends.
He's also seriously talented. It was Jean-François who wrote and composed and sang “Picture This”, which was made as a gift for me for putting the communities together; it’s still one of the kindest things anyone has ever done for me.
A bit of a detour
He's been over from Canada for the past few weeks, in Avignon in France, performing on stage, but rather than head straight home afterwards he decided to take a detour across to the UK for a few days, which is how yesterday came about.
My friend Brian Lee arranged it all; a group of us at Mud Dock in Bristol for breakfast at 10am on the Sunday, everyone meeting up together, though the real reason we were all there was to see Jean-François, who's such a big part of the communities.
Meeting him was strange in the best possible way. It was almost as if we'd met before. All those awkward first time barriers you normally get with somebody just weren't there, and that's the special thing about the community, because by the time you meet in person you've already become good friends. Surreal, but wonderful.
Breakfast was fantastic. Lots of laughter, lots of chatting, and then a photo walk around Bristol afterwards, grabbing coffee, more chatting, just a really good social day with good people.
The kit I took
I did take a bit of kit along, because I wanted to make that extra bit of effort and photograph the fact that Jean-François was over here, properly on my main camera.
- the Westcott FJ800
- 3ft x 4ft softbox, which is my favourite
- Convertible umbrella
- Light stand
One light, one modifier, one stand. That's it.
The group shot, and why I went with the umbrella
After breakfast we did a group shot. There were quite a few of us, it all needed to happen quickly, and what I wanted was for the light to burst out of the FJ800 and cover everybody evenly. A softbox would have been too restrictive for that, so I went with the convertible umbrella instead, took the black cover off and fired the light straight through it. TTL, of course, as I always do. It worked beautifully and it took no time at all.
Portraits of Jean-François
Later on I wanted a few more pictures of Jean Francois on his own, and that's when the 3ft x 4ft softbox came out, and made use of the metal staircase leading up to Mud Dock.
I set the camera to manual first and dialled in the scene I wanted, mainly so I'd hold some detail in the sky rather than blowing it out. Then the flash goes on in TTL, with the Fuji set to face detection.
Because the camera is looking at the face, the TTL exposure gets worked out for the skin rather than for everything else in the frame, so it's exposing for the thing that actually matters in a portrait.
With a great exposure from the start, I then adjust it to taste and lock it in. Whatever power TTL just chose, I use TTL to Manual to copy the exact same power over into the Manual side of things, and every frame after that is consistent. That's it.
A few more by a tree after that, and then another group shot, because I couldn't resist.
What I'd hoped for, and what actually happened
I'd wanted much more time with him than one day.
The plan had been to get him down here to the south west, to meet Anne and to show him around Lyme Regis, and I'd even cancelled two of the Wex roadshow dates so I'd be home while he was over.
Then the work we're having done at the house landed on this exact week 🤷♂️
There's talk of him being back over later in the year, which would be brilliant, so hopefully we'll get that time yet.
Jean-François is still here in the UK as I write this. He stayed with a friend (Anthony Crothers) in South Wales on Sunday night, Brian picked him up again today, and he's with him now until Wednesday morning, when he heads off to the train station, over to France, and then home to Canada. A bit of a whirlwind, but so worth it.
Au revoir, mon ami!