Lu-Hai Liang

Although primarily a freelance writer; I’ve also made money from photography, selling photo galleries to CNN, Aljazeera, Dazed.com, etc, as well as printed in two editions of Marie Claire using this Canon S120.

What if you could travel the world in search of hidden sights; uncovering secret stories, and journeying to places few have ever seen? What if you had to tough it out bumping on rocky roads for hours on end, drinking vodka with lairy locals, and sleeping in godforsaken places, but always lit inside by the spirit of adventure?

This is the life Amos Chapple wanted. Amos Chapple is a New Zealander, somewhere in his 30s, and lives in Prague, Czech Republic.

Many photojournalists, however, travel. Over the years I’ve gotten to know a few. I once interviewed a photojournalist who I’ll never forget. I interviewed Nicole Tung who went into Libya during the civil war in her early twenties. Even over Skype, the preternatural confidence of someone who decided to venture, unassisted and of her own volition, into an active conflict zone, was clearly audible.

So why did this Amos chap intrigue me? It was because he did something different. It was because he decided to head into the field with a small, Micro Four Thirds camera (M43), rather than a large, full-frame DSLR.

M43 cameras use relatively small sensors (although still much bigger than the sensors found in smartphone or most compact cameras), than compared with the full-frame sensors found in professional-class DSLRs like Canon’s 5D series.

But they make up for this by having much smaller camera bodies and lenses.

In Chapple’s own words, they are, apart from not so great low light performance, all good: “The dainty size that no one is bothered by; the lightning-quick focus; the USB charging port that allows me to disappear into the wilds for days on end with just two batteries and a powerbank; the early adoption of Wi-Fi for zippy filing to social media and backing up pics on the run; the pop-up flash (I’ve never understood the aversion); the rock-solid reliability (ten years of full-time shooting and I’ve only had one camera fail in a rainstorm).”

And the results he gets are spectacular, with a filmic quality that lends itself to a documentary style. His photos have been published in most major news titles and before he went freelance he shot fulltime for UNESCO, traveling around capturing World Heritage Sites.

You can check out his stuff here, here, and here – including the story of how, at 27, he decided to transform his life to commit to a freelance photojournalist’s life.

I emailed Chapple to ask about his choice to shoot full-time with such a camera. Here is what he said:

I chose M43 because it’s IMO the best compromise between image quality and physical size. Maybe I could get cleaner photos on a bigger sensor but would I have enough stamina to go as far as I can with a tiny camera? Would I be able to get into the same intimate, touchy situations that the discreet cameras allow me to? Probably not, so I’m prepared to use a camera with a max usable ISO of 3200!

Good stuff!

Here is another example of a photographer who thought outside the box, and another story I felt inspired by.