Wedding Pictures Of The Week

 Last weekend I photographed the wedding of Tina and Christian. What a wonderful couple they are. The wedding was quite fun and here are some of my favorite shots.
As usual all photos were taken with the amazing Fuji X cameras.
Enjoy....

Flowers

Lines

Urban Landscapes: Paris

Last week I was in Paris for the "Paris Tap Reunion". It was a wonderful gig and a great workshop.
Next stop: St. Petersburg with Kurt Holzkämper and our "Tap&Bass" Reunion.

Fine Art Prints at Society6

I decided to start selling some of my freelance photographs through Society6.com. All lot of those pictures are part of my Urban Landscape series and some street photography. I will continuously upload my work there, so please check it out.
You can find it here: www.society6.com/thomasmarek

Have a great day, Thomas

Wedding Picture Of The Week

This summer I had the pleasure of photographing the wedding of my fellow tap dancer and friend Sebastian Weber. We both started our professional tap dance career at about the same time in the early 1990s and worked several times together. It is a joy to see that we are both still standing and pursuing our artistic life. 

It was a wonderful wedding and here are some of my favourite photos. Enjoy....

The wedding of Karolin and Till and more thoughts on the Fuji X system

I recently photographed the wedding of my very good friends Karolin and Till in Hamburg. Here are a few shots from that wonderful day.
It is now also been almost one year that I made the switch from my Nikon D3 equipment to the Fuji X system. For one year I only shot with those wonderful little gems and it is time for quick résumé.
My setup consists of one X100 and two XPro 1 bodies along with the 18mm, 35mm and 60 mm prime. And a little EFX20 flash ( which I love!)

First of all I am very much looking forward to the upcoming Firmware update in supposedly two days. Getting faster Af is always good and the idea of focus peaking is also quite interesting. Although I must say that I enjoy the cameras most in OVF mode and only occasionally make use of the EVF.
After one year I have really grown into the system and I like it more and more every day. Unfortunately my biggest priority on my firmware update wish list will most likely not be implemented: the ability to lock focus with a half pressed shutter button and being able to continue shooting while it is half pressed. This is standard for all SLRs since the mass introduction of autofocus and I can't understand why most mirrorless and the Fuji X cameras don't allow this. Because of lacking that feature you have to always engage autofocus again even when the distance to the object does not change or you have to lock focus with a second button. Either way it is not very convenient and time consuming and a little bit annoying.
Other than that I can hardly think of anything that I miss. Image and jpeg quality still astounds me every time I upload my pictures, white balance is very accurate and the lenses are a joy to use. I also find the cameras very reliable. In this year I never had any problem with the bodies. They seem very sturdy yet light and even occasional rain doesn't stop them, although full weather sealing would be nice.

My personal wish list for the next Xpro would be as followed:

- ability to lock af with a half pressed shutter button while continue to take pictures.

- full weather sealed body

- stronger battery

- a more resistant on off switch (it to easily turns on while being placed in the bag etc)

- a second SD card slot. And both slots placed somewhere in the side of the body.

- and of course always faster Af


Enjoy the pics...

//Thomas

Picture of the week #4

Wedding picture of the week #2

I photographed the wonderful wedding of Fariba and Boris yesterday. They are such a great couple and very nice people. Here is one shot I really like...

Best of weddings 2012

While getting reading for this year's wedding season I was going through my photos from 2012. Here is a collection of a few of my favorites. Some I have posted before, some others I haven't.
Enjoy...

Swing Dancing!

Two days ago I was hired by my swing dancing friends and colleagues from swingwerkstatt in Hamburg to photograph their new promo shots. 

It was quite fun and for the first time I got to use the X Pro 1 with studio lights. I used two Profoto 600 Compacts with a 5" Octa Softbox. 

Unfortunately while setting up everything I ran into trouble because my X 1 Pro would not fire the strobes. Neither cable via the sync outlet nor radio triggered with my Pulsar radio triggers would work. It took me a while to realize that my camera was not properly working so luckily I had a second body which just worked fine. 

Once everything was up and running it was quite fun to shoot with the X Pro 1 in a studio setup and the results turned out quite nice. 

Please visit my friends at www.swingwerkstatt.de

So here are a few Lindy Hop pics....

Landscape

Urban Landscapes #5

Teaching at the University of Washington

Soon after I came to Seattle in November I met visual artist Susie Lee (http://www.susiejlee.com) and she invited me to collaborate in teaching a photography class at the University of Washington. 

I was very excited about the project especially because the idea was to combine and research elements of tap dance and photography that both art forms have in common. We discussed different physical and musical exercises that could work together and lead the students to new ideas in their art making and we developed different ideas around time, timing, movement and space. 

Last Monday classes started and it was quite fun. We started off using exercises that I often use with my dance company to create an awareness of space, rhythm and time and that helps your mind connecting with each other and your environment. It was was great doing this not with dancers but photography students. We later combined these exercises with image making.

The class will continue for a few weeks and it's gonna be very interesting to see where this will lead.

Here are a few photos from our experiment.... 

//Thomas

On the streets...Seattle #1

Here are a few street photographs from the last few days. I just love to roam the city with my camera trying to capture a certain feel and atmosphere of the neighborhoods, the people and the environment.
Enjoy... Thomas