Michael Wayne Plant is now a Sony Global Imaging Ambassador Europe.

 

My work is now listed on the Sony Global Imaging Ambassador website,

http://imagingambassadors.sony.net/ambassadors/michael-wayne-plant/

To me its a great honour that Sony, has made me one of their Sony Global Imaging Ambassador’s. I have been a Sony Advocate since 2008, in which time, I have give lots of talks at a wide range of venues across the United Kingdom, I have been to Ireland and Scotland for Sony talks and was one of two photographers involved in the official European launch of the Sony a77 in Greece.

I genuinely love the cameras, that I have used, which Sony makes. I started using the a900 and three Zeiss lens (the 24-70 f2.6, 85 f1.4 and 135 f1.8),which in my opinion had (still does) the best optical viewfinder of any DSLR camera.  I loved the a77, when I learnt about the focus peaking and the live histogram in the viewfinder. The a99 only improved on this and added full frame to the mix. I used these cameras for portraiture and a bit of fashion photography.

A funny thing was that my first experience of using a Sony Nex camera did not work out so well, as I kept trying to give myself a black eye by bashing the camera into my head, because I habitually kept trying to put the screen too my eye, but as anyone who knows a camera like the Nex-5 is designed to be held at a distance and used with a viewing screen. I need a viewfinder, it is how I learnt to see as a photographer and to my relief Sony introduced the Nex-7 with a great little electronic viewfinder in a small package, it is still one of my favourite little cameras.

However, since I initially started with Sony, as my work changed and developed, I found my camera needs changed, I now use both the a7R and a7S as my main cameras. I adore these cameras, each has its own strengths and weaknesses, taken together they complement each other to make a complete solution to my camera needs. I have been fortunate that Sony cameras changed as I did, allowing me to still use the technologies that I want, in smaller camera bodies. I find myself increasingly using the a7S as my main camera because of its silent shutter, and its focusing speed, while I use the a7R because I of the large digital image files and it works for me in any photographic studio work that I do. I still use the focus peaking and rely on the live histograms in my viewfinder, as these let me very quickly check exposure settings .while being very accurate with my exposure. As I tend to expose my images on the light side (i.e. a technique called ETTR {Expose To The Right}). My cameras will keep changing as Sony develops their technologies and judging by their history over the past 7 years I am excited for the future. This partnership with Sony, will allow me to have access to these new tools for my photography. I am now able to make images that I could only dream of a few years ago and that is in part down to the cameras that are now available from Sony.

My photography is all now created using Sony cameras and lens.