Three Photographers, Three Different Specialties, One Location

I recently heard about three Puerto Rican photographers who would go out and shoot casually as friends. But, what made them unique was that these three photographers specialized in three completely different genres of photography. 

I've met thousands of photographers, and I have been to countless photography meetups and shootouts, but this was the first time I had ever heard about photographers shooting "together," but shooting completely different things. I decided to shoot a video featuring these three amazing photographers and their unique relationship. They asked me to meet them at a beach on the north side of the island, and they all started shooting, and we started filming. 

When we arrived, the sun was pretty harsh, but that didn't stop José Almodóvar. As a macro photographer, all of his images were lit with strobe anyway, so natural light wasn't a factor. I asked José about shooting with natural light, and he explained that even if the light was perfect, he has to get so close to his subjects that the camera and lens would cast a shadow on his scene. Because of this, he uses a Olympus FL-600R Flash inside a hand-built softbox that illuminates a piece of foam attached to the lens. This setup creates extremely soft light above his subjects. José said he preferred shooting with a M4/3 camera like the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II, because the small sensor made shooting macros and dealing with depth of field much easier. For a lens, he used the Olympus 60mm f/2.8 Macro with Raynox DCR-250 2.5x Magnifier. 

Tommy Del Valle is an amazing drone photographer and videographer. I was expecting him to have an Inspire, but was pleasantly surprised to see him shooting with a Mavic 2 Pro. To keep his frame rates in check, he was using Polar Pro filters. One piece of gear that I had never heard of was the CrystalSky monitor. This screen made things much easier to see in bright daylight. Tommy ended up shooting some video clips that I used in my video and took some amazing pictures of the area from the sky. 

Loscar Numael is a very well-known landscape photographer who specializes in minimalist scenes sometimes taken with extremely long shutter speeds. Loscar was shooting with the FujiFilm GFX 50s and Canon TS-E 24mm lens. He also had the Rolls Royce of tripod heads, the Arca-Swiss Cube. Unlike the other photographers who shot multiple images, Loscar found his composition and waited hours for the perfect light. 

Big thanks to all three photographers for allowing us to film them. It was great seeing such talented and totally different photographers shooting together.