A portrait series shot on the FujiFilm X100T

Towards the end of my last trip to Cambodia, I had the opportunity to shoot a portrait series I'd been thinking about for over a year. The series is titled 'The Road Home' and was shot in the rural Cambodian village of Kok Thnort. I've spent a number of years working in this village with Harvest Cambodia and have always been aware of the daily migration of locals into the major centre of Siem Reap for work or study. The trip takes approximately 45 minutes by motorbike, much longer if you're on a bicycle or on foot. As there aren't many employment opportunities in rural villages and the level of education is often much lower, villagers will often be employed in labour intensive jobs such as construction work or rice harvesting.

The shoot took place over two hours on a typical mid-week afternoon as locals made their way home. This is a favourite time of mine in the village as it's a time when you see locals relaxing, knowing their long day of labouring is over. Men are playing volleyball, ladies are catching up with their neighbours. The aim of the shoot was to photograph a cross section of the community, trying to capture the feeling of contentedness they have in knowing that their long journey home had come to an end.

Both my lighting and camera setup were kept as simple (and light) as possible, this was due to the fact that I didn't want to hold people up for to long (I averaged approximately 2 minutes between each portrait) and also because I'd been travelling.

I shot the series on the FujiFilm X100T with the addition of the tcl-x100 tele-conveter. The primary reason behind shooting the series on the X100T was to utilise its leaf shutter. The tele-converter (which in my opinion is a must have for all x100 shooters) gave me a more traditional portrait focal length and also a shallower depth of field. The leaf shutter on X100T is fantastic in that it allowed me to sync my flash at 1/1000 sec, this combined with the in-built 3 stop ND filter lets me shoot portraits at f2 in very bright conditions and still overpower the sun using only a speedlight.