Hello and welcome to 'Out of the Darkroom' on AdoramaTV. I'm Ruth Medjber
and joining me on the show today is photo editor and Instagram star Jack Caffrey.
AdoramaTV presents 'Out of the Darkroom' with Ruth Medjber.
Jack thanks so much for joining me on the show.
Thanks so much for having me.
I love your work, absolutely love your work. Can you, maybe, tell us a little bit about how you got
started in photography?
OK, well it's a long old story but I'll tighten it up for you.
Basically, I was born into it. My dad was a photographer for years so he'd come home with
this thing called the gadget bag which was like a bag full of camera equipment and I was
only a little guy so it was like this was my playground, so I would pick up cameras and
mess about with his gadget bag and go on jobs with him at the weekend and that's the bug.
That's how it happened.
So at the moment you've got a really cool role, probably what
every photographer wants to be which is a photo editor right?
Oh I don't know, yeah, probably the other side of the lens but yeah it is. That's what I'm
doing now. I'm a photo editor with the Irish Farmer's Journal that role in Dublin here.
And how did that come about? How did you land that role?
So it was being thrown in the deep end. It was like, I've been a press photographer
for years so that's where the crossover kind of happened was that I had been
photographing in the Farmer's Journal for over 15 years .
What is that like? Because I know I mean, maybe I don't know but
I'm very much a Dublin girl, a city girl. I'm not used to farms or anything like that and
sometimes when, you know, you meet country folk and they're looking at you
like, silly little city girl do you get that a lot when you go visit farms?
All the time. This skinny, hairy
jackeen arrives on to a farm and they expect a guy with a flat cap and a stick and
I arrive, so it's always fun, like, you know. Basically it's like you
come in and you just have to kind of react. I'm a city boy as well. I'm not
from a farming background so I'm always looking at things on a farm in a
different way so I suppose a farmer would come on and start eyeballing
what's going on on the farm and what's he doing. I come with ignorance in a weird way but just
open to learning something about the farmer.
The light is such a big thing in your
photographs. You can see it through your website, through your Instagram,
that the light is the subject almost.
That's it and that's what photography is. It's the study of light, you know,
but that's where I've honed my kind of thing that I like to do is observe light.
Would you ever anything to help you get those in terms of light reflectors to control the natural light or are
you just really good?
On my Instagram feed, it's all mobile phone work so that's taken with an iPhone all the time.
No! You're Instagram feed is all iPhone work.
That's what it is, yeah.
Yeah, it's the iPhone. It's manipulating the phone to work with the light.
OK, you have to talk me through it, then. How do you manipulate the phone to get those pictures?
There's sneaky techniques on the phone, you know the way you can tap the phone for your exposure
and your autofocus but you can swipe. You can control your exposure through that so
you're almost always... well what I do is exposing for the highlight all the time.
OK, we have to talk about your Instagram feed because you have over 18,000 followers.
Oh God is it that many? Like I don't know.
How does that happen? How did you get so many visitors and followers to your site?
It's just sheer luck, I'll be honest with you.
It pure is. I've been on Instagram for over three and a half years so
it was very much just working away at it and it was it a total new lease of
life in my photography was mobile phone photography because I would have been,
you know, you've got a camera around your neck and you were lugging that around. Suddenly there's this
thing and this amazing camera in it and it's given me so much freedom to create
stuff in the palm of your hand. It was amazing.
Fantastic. So are you going to plan on staying in the Farmer's Journal for another 15 years?
God, no pressure. Well, who knows, who knows what might happen but I'm shooting video
now which is kind of a whole new angle to my work which is really good
fun as well.
And is that of farmer's as well?
Yeah, yeah and kind of commercial work, more corporate stuff that we're shooting at the
moment but it's actually like another new lease of lifeis
this like shooting with a Canon C100 with cine lenses and it's like all of a sudden it's not just
video. It's cinematography, like, it brings a different level of quality.
How have you found the change because I know a lot of photographer's that would
never ever consider being a videographer. It's amazing that you can do both.
I know, I suppose, the one thing that I've
found out is stop panning and moving because obviously with the photography you kind of shift around and
you're constantly ducking and diving. This, you kind of really have to lock it down,
stop shifting around and because you're composing the same you
just have to try to compose within that framework and yeah, I really love it. I find
it really enjoyable.
Thanks so much for chatting to me.
Thanks for having me. It was great fun, thank you.
Thank you. Cheers.
Thanks so much for joining me on the show today. If you have any comments, please feel free
to leave them in the section below. If you'd like to brush up on your own
photography skills, check out the Adorama Learning Center and if you'd like
to see more videos, subscribe to the Adorama YouTube channel.
Thanks so much and I'll see you again soon.
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