Who are you and what’s your profession?

I am an educator by profession and teach film and animation to the next generation of budding filmmakers. Photography is a hobby that is not only a great way to relax but really works well alongside this area of education.

What’s your rig?

I am a Fujifilm X fan, I love them. A few years ago I started to notice how often I left my DSLR at home because of the size and weight. It is hard enough to trek the Mourne Mountains and you aim to travel as light as possible. The Fujifilm X range has come on leaps and bounds since my first X100 back in 2011. I am mainly shooting with the X100s and the new X-E2. Lens wise I tend to stick to 14mm, 23mm, 35mm and 60mm. The image quality is superb and you can effortlessly carry them around everywhere. I actually only bring out a digital slr for music photography where I need the reach.

What hardware do you use?

I have a Macbook Pro (15 inch) and a 23 inch external monitor. I have a brilliant Elgato Thunderbolt drive where my main Lightroom library resides. It is like lightning and makes processing images so much faster. I moved from a 13” to 15” laptop to make processing images easier but I still rely on my 23” monitor. Also having the second monitor means I can view an image both on retina and on a standard display when processing in post production.

What software do you use?

I use Lightroom 5 and Photoshop CC. Lightroom is the perfect application to not only catalogue your images but the post processing tools are second to none. I use Photoshop on and off to make the odd fix but since the improvements of Lightroom 4 and 5 I find I am using Photoshop less and less. I have started creating and offering free Lightroom presets via my site

For uploading to flickr I use the brilliant Flickery app as it allows me to easily put the images into the appropriate groups. For flickr set management I use SuprSetr which automatically puts your photos into sets based on keywords.  It even ranks your images based on popularity. I set up a set each year that creates the top 100 photos for that year and SuprSetr does the rest.

For backup I use Time Machine with two separate drives.

What would be your dream rig?

I consider myself very lucky to have the rig I have. I work to only replace aspects of my setup when they have broken or are three or four generations older than the current release. That said I would love one of the new Apple Cinema displays.

What’s your favorite photography quote?

Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop. – Ansel Adams