A composer with a passion for cinematic themes

Hi Cosmo! Could you please introduce yourself? Where do you live, and what do you do? Also, what are your hobbies and passions?
Hey dude! I’m based up in Walthamstow and am a professional composer, DIT in the making, and sometimes I go out and take photos. I enjoy hanging out with my friends, watching films,  seeing what I can create in my studio and, of course, going out with my camera!

Being a Composer, could you share how you became interested in photography and how it all began?
So, the whole photography thing kind of happened by accident. As I mentioned earlier, I’m becoming a DIT in the film industry, which is a role that has quite a lot of different elements to it, one of which being colour grading. I thought that buying a camera and shooting some of my own stuff to practice grading would be a good idea. I went out in Canary Wharf at night and then realised that I actually really enjoyed shooting, and it all went from there.

Do you believe that Music and Photography can convey similar feelings and emotions in different ways, despite being distinct mediums?
Yeah 100%, they are both forms of art that you can view, interpret and be inspired by in various different ways. Sometimes I use photos of mine as a creative starting point when I  am in the studio and then on the flip side, I will sometimes walk around listening to something I had composed during the day, which probably sounds a bit vain but I like my photographs to have a similar feeling to what I compose, moody and a bit cinematic, so they kind of feed into each other in my head.

“I like my photographs to have a similar feeling to what I compose”

We would be interested to know more about your creative process and how you continue to improve and develop your unique style of photography. Your work often embraces darkness and mystery, with a significant proportion of your pieces captured during the night or in challenging weather conditions, which undoubtedly adds to the overall mood of your work.
Yeah, I absolutely love shooting in shit weather haha, as you said, the weather can add an element that takes shots to a higher level. My creative process when I am out shooting is often pretty slapdash, I’ll work out a rough area where I think I could get something good and just float around and see what I can find. If I spot a particular place which I really think has the potential to yield something awesome, like a skyscraper covered in fog or a cool neon sign I will hang around and take my time, try different angles and different lenses, I’ve only been doing this for just under two years so I am certainly no expert, I keep an eye out for something cool and if I see it I’ll press the shutter button!

Would you agree that your preference for taking photographs during the night hours not only allows you to capture isolated subjects, often in the form of silhouettes, but also helps you avoid large crowds?
When I first started I only shot at night but I realised that was a very misguided way of working as you can get some incredible stuff during the day, there definitely does tend to be less people around at night but having zero light does present its own set of challenges. I’m not averse to shooting in crowds but I would say I try and avoid them as I do prefer to keep the number of people in my shot to a minimum. Crowds can be very frustrating when you spot a cool subject and they are obscured by an endless number of people, I try counteract this by using longer lenses which might sound like a bit of a mad thing to do but it does help to pick things out and focus in around the crowd.

Do you always have a camera with you? What type of scenarios catch your attention and trigger you to grab the camera and take a shot?
I don’t always have one on me no, I have toyed with the idea of getting a smaller Fuji body like an X-E series with a pancake to carry on its own at all times but I like having my bag with all of my gear in it so I have all the means to get a shot that I spot. Those compact setups also have issues of their own that could affect my work, like the body lacking IBIS and the glass not being fast enough to cope with the very low light that I often operate in. I am always on the look out for cool looking subjects in interesting settings, be it people, planes,  trains, birds etc, as I said earlier, I just move about in a general area and see what I can find. It’s quite instinctive when I see something I like.

Could you tell us about the cameras and lenses you are currently using? What are your thoughts on the advantages and disadvantages of the Fuji X system in relation to the type of work you do?
I have a Fuji X-T5 as my body. I started shooting on an X-H1 and always recommend it when people reach out to me to ask for advice on picking gear or moving to the Fuji system. Regarding lenses, I use a Zeiss 32mm F1.8, and then the following Fuji lenses: 16mm F1.4,  23mm F1.4, 56mm F1.2 (not WR), 90mm F2. I also have a few funny bits of glass that I sometimes screw on the Zeiss lens, they give off weird flares and distortion when I want something a bit stranger, along with diffusion filters and other various screw on elements.

To conclude, could you kindly make a brief description of your post-processing workflow? It would be helpful to know the most frequently used tools, whether you have created any presets to speed up your workflow or if every photo is processed from scratch.
I have a bunch of base looks I’ve made with the various bits of software I use when grading my shots. I will often go to these as a starting point and then fine tune it if I think the shot needs a bit of work. I use Capture One Pro as my RAW processor / Library, I think the majority of its algorithms are a bit better than Lightroom’s and I like the fact its GUI is very customisable along with having support for LUT files, although the latter requires a bit of trickery to get to work. To create some of my base looks I use 3DLutCreator which has some very interesting tools not available in standard editing software like C1 and LR, like CMYK curves, non linear white balance shifting, RGB mixers for highlights and shadows etc. I have exported these profiles I have made in 3DLutCreator to then use into Capture One where I  can pull it up quickly when I am grading and edit further. It’s quite complicated and certainly not totally necessary but I do like the look it gives.