In Memory of Gary Parker — Photographer, Mentor, Friend
In Memoriam
Gary Parker (1950 - 2026)
A master of light and color — fast, funny, and unforgettable.
Gary & Kimberley Parker with their dog Prudence near their home in Oregon. (Photo: Ron Martinsen)
I’m writing this with a heavy heart. My friend and mentor, Gary Parker, passed away on
Monday, January 5, 2026.
Gary wasn’t the kind of photographer who took forever to “get the shot.” He was the opposite:
fast, impulsive in the best way, and incredibly effective. He had an instinct for finding
a great frame right now — amazing color, interesting backgrounds, and that moment that makes people stop and look.
Executives loved working with him because he could walk in, connect, create energy, and deliver.
Great photographers don’t just chase perfect lighting — they know how to create it, shape it,
and capture it quickly. Gary did that with humor, efficiency, and outrageous control of light and color.
And when the subject was difficult? That’s where Gary was at his best. He had a real flare for
pulling emotion out of people — even the ones who didn’t want to give you anything.
He could get someone from guarded to genuine in minutes.
A couple moments that changed photography for me forever
What struck me most was Gary’s insane awareness of background, light,
and surroundings. His ability to get a unique shot often involved him shooting from angles
where it was impossible to even look through the viewfinder. He trashed every idea I had about the technical side
of photography — and somehow still got the crisp, perfect shot.
Ron Martinsen and Gary Parker during our workshop. Photo by workshop student Mike Wiebe.
Gary smiling while teaching me one of his lighting tricks. (Photo: Ron Martinsen)
I’ll also never forget the time Gary flew up from California to visit me at my house. When the door rang,
my wife, son, and I ran to open it — and I didn’t even see Gary right away because he was already down low,
camera up, catching the coolest photo of us answering the door.
Ron, Moon, and Kai at my house during Gary’s visit. (Photo: Gary Parker, edited by Ron Martinsen)
The next ten minutes were the same kind of magic: Gary catching fun photos at angles I never would have imagined.
I was watching a photography master do his craft with joy and creativity — and it changed how I photographed forever.
Gary with Kai during an impromptu lighting lesson he gave me at my house. (Photo: Ron Martinsen)
“The Professor” — a portfolio shot from that same lesson. (Photo: Ron Martinsen)
A photo I produced and had my wife take in the spirit of Gary’s style — Gary liked it so much he ended up editing it.
Taylor in Oregon — a random snap where he squatted on the trail so I could build a more interesting background (thanks to Gary’s advice).
This was the shot that reinforced: look harder at the background than the subject. (Photo: Ron Martinsen)
During our workshop, Gary taught me you can get a stable long exposure with a mini tripod braced against your chest.
I discuss the technique here:
Drastically Improve Your Handheld Shots
.
It changed my photography forever. (Photo: Ron Martinsen)
Gary’s guest posts on my blog
Gary didn’t just influence my photography — he contributed directly to this blog:
1990 Pulitzer Prize Co-Winner (General News Reporting) — for his role on the staff of the San Jose (CA) Mercury News covering the October 17, 1989 Bay Area earthquake and its aftermath.
National Newspaper Photographer of the Year (twice), Southern Photographer of the Year, and a national lecturer on lighting, creativity and other topics.
Photographed innovators and leaders including Steve Jobs, Jensen Huang, Larry Ellison, Bill Gates, Tim Cook, and many more.
Original Creator / Associate Producer of the “Big Tiny” TV series featuring Bridgette & Brad Jordan, the World’s Smallest Lady and World’s Smallest Siblings.
If you own a pet, some of Gary’s work has likely come into your home on pet food packages. You might have even purchased Hallmark greeting cards with his photos on them.
Named an Honorary Lifetime Member of Little People of America; he once had the largest collection of photos of his friends with dwarfism, including some of the world’s smallest people.
Gary taught me a lot about photography — but some of the most valuable lessons were on the business and marketing side:
how to position your work, how to talk about it, how to price it, and how to build credibility without acting needy.
I’ll always appreciate all the time he spent teaching me and the laughter we enjoyed during our endless conversations and emails.
Rest easy, Gary. Thank you for the lessons, the laughs, and the light.
— Ron Martinsen
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It's impressive what Adobe is doing with Photoshop via ChatGPT. It allows for advanced tasks with adjustments that are layered and can be saved as a PSD file for you to edit later. It's more powerful than you think, so check out this video to learn how to set it up and use it.
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I just wanted to give you a heads up that On1 is making their Effects product free to everyone starting today! Click the image above to learn more.
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If you enjoyed this article, please support future articles like this by making a donation or saving money by using my discount coupon codes. Either way, your support is greatly appreciated!
This blog is intended for freelance writing and sharing of opinions and is not a representative of any of the companies whose links are provided on this site.
The opinions provided are of Ron Martinsen alone and do not reflect the view of any other entity
NOTE: This site requires cookies and uses affiliate linking to sites that use cookies.
If you enjoyed this article, please support future articles like this by making a donation or saving money by using my discount coupon codes. Either way, your support is greatly appreciated!
This blog is intended for freelance writing and sharing of opinions and is not a representative of any of the companies whose links are provided on this site.
The opinions provided are of Ron Martinsen alone and do not reflect the view of any other entity
When I reviewed the Fujifilm GFX 50s with the 32-64mm in 2019, I was impressed with the amazing image quality, but It felt a bit useless as anything but a landscape or studio camera. Sure the image quality was great, but where things
were with image processing and noise reduction back then, it just was a very limited use camera with a huge price. Fast forward to 2024, and the GFX 100s II addresses all those concerns even with twice the pixels.
Over the past few months I’ve had the luxury of putting this camera through its paces using the
GF 45-100mm f/4 R LM OIS WR Lens and I’m pleased to say that all my past complaints have been
addressed. What we have now is a camera that is usable as handheld camera for everyday use, studio, landscape and sports in good lighting conditions.
Overall I found the user controls to be excellent from the ease of use of the touch screen, to the well designed Q menu, to the great traction of the joystick, everything is there when I need it without any hassle. \ What’s more,
features like object (including pets), people and eye detection (including options for right and left eye only) make it easy to get a sharp focused shot without much challenge on your part.
One feature I didn’t play with too much because the default was good were the metering modes. Part of that was because I forgot that Fujifilm hides the metering options under the Photometry setting of the Shooting Settings, but it’s
easy enough to assign that feature to one of the function buttons.That said, I only had two situations during the entire time I reviewed this camera whereby the default metering wasn’t spot on.
Here’s a video that does a deeper dive into the features of this camera along with some of my thoughts:
Now a 102MP camera creates amazing image files, but it comes with some pain as well. For starters, my RAF (raw) files were typically around 62 to 104MB and my
HIF (HEIF) files could be as little as 4MB, but more frequently from 12 to 34MB on average. Toss one of the files (in any format) into
Photoshop, and within a few layers you easily get 1 to 2GB files. As a result, after you’ve broke the bank
to buy this camera and a lens, you better plan to upgrade your Synology NAS because you are going to need a ton of high speed disk
storage! With that disclaimer out of the way, you’ll be rewarded with a lot of data to work with to create amazing images. Here’s one of the first shots I did in a makeshift studio in my garage using just a couple lights:
You quickly realize that it’s easy to recover from just about any lighting mistake you made as the dynamic range is so wide.
Here’s a link to the in-camera HIF file converted to JPEG of the above photo. It was easy to cover up some of my mistakes and edit a file that
captured my intent perfectly.
Real World Shots
This was literally the first photo I took with this camera, so I was pretty excited right from the start. While this review will not feature many of the photos I took, here’s a look at some unedited images I took during my time
reviewing this camera. In a few cases I show a cropped version, but link to the unedited original. However, all of these photos are HIF converted to JPEG versions of the in-camera original using
Lightroom classic version 14.
All of my photos shown in this article are for your personal viewing. You may not print, edit, reuse or otherwise share any of these photos without my written consent. I retain copyright ownership and all rights are reserved.
This next photo represents a lot of what I love about this camera. In this case, I was taking photos elsewhere when I heard a ruckus in the water. I never noticed this guy, but he was winding down for the day. Without the ability to get
close enough, I just took the shot knowing that with 102mp I could just crop and still have enough pixels for a reasonable photo. Click the image to see the full uncropped version:
An added bonus of taking this shot was discovering the shadow details – this is the in-camera original with only a crop, yet I can clearly make out details on the face and in the body. What’s more, the sunset sky offers an amazing
background as does the faint view of the mountains – captured identical to the naked eye at that moment in time.
Here’s a better view of that sunset and the mountains, off to the right, are a bit easier to see in this one:
Again, I was impressed with the dynamic range of this sensor – wow! Then again, taking photos of sunsets kind of became addicting with this camera.
Here’s actually the first sunset I took with this camera from a house on the Puget Sound coast in Seattle when I was supposed to taking pictures of something else (hence the odd camera settings):
Again, zero edits – just point and click at f/5.6! If you live in Scottsdale, Arizona, this camera is a must for those amazing sunsets! And just because they are so fun to photograph, here’s another one:
Now let’s take a break from landscapes for a bit, and get to one of the surprises I discovered with this camera during the early days of my review. For kicks and giggles I decided to shoot a football game with it just to see if it was
up to the task, and it did much better than I expected. Here’s a shot that is really zoomed in for the crop, but you can click it to see the original image:
Even though 90mm wasn’t enough to get me right there in the action, I could toss a ton of pixels and still get a shot with plenty of pixels of the play. Here’s another play:
It had been a while since I shot football, so it was nice being able to have some breathing room while shooting the play and then using the crop tool to get closer to the action. However, all was not perfect. Despite great light, if I
did a pan too fast while shooting the camera couldn’t keep up and the image would get very distorted creating an effect I’ve never seen before:
I had a few dozen pics like that, some of which were much worse, but I won’t hold it against the camera as this camera was never designed to be a action sports camera. That said, I wonder if it will potentially be addressed with a
firmware fix in the future.
Going back into the studio, here’s an unedited shot that shows how amazing this camera is with skin tones and textures, but it also highlights the danger of use the ambiance auto white balance setting when you get back to the studio:
Fortunately, I have the raw image so that’s a problem that’s easy to fix. However, the HIF suffers from a yellow background and the kids got unnecessarily scolded for not brushing their teeth properly – ha ha!
Speaking of textures, this camera just blew me away with every photo, so I sometimes found myself just trying things to see how much detail it would capture. Here’s another shot of my daughter in her Korean Hanbok:
The detail in her hair, the dress, and the ribbon just make me grin every time I'm zoom in. It's going to be tough returning this camera back to
B&H at the end of this review!
Speaking of detail, look at the detail in the cliff on this handheld shot of Snoqualmie Falls. Now this one is lightly edited in Lightroom due to the mixed light, but you can click the image to see the unedited original:
This is a really tough shot because if you expose for the falls, the cliff is totally blown out. If you expose for the cliff (as I’ve done here) then you black out the falls. Knowing the range of this camera, I just exposed for the
cliff and figured I could work it out at home – and I was right. The only problem here was that I needed a wider angle lens so I could capture more sky and the bottom of the falls, but alas the compromised shot still wasn’t too shabby
for a handled snap.
Just in case you were wondering, here’s the full shot of the falls in portrait orientation zoomed out to the max at 45mm:
Speaking of mixed light, this camera had me embracing mixed light instead of avoiding. The next two photos of my daughter in the park gave me a chance to play with the mixed light and I was rewarded:
That said, even light and underexposed shots still gave me a lot to work with in post-processing. Here’s one that I’ve left unedited for this article, but it was one of my favorites after cropping it to a portrait orientation and
selectively lighting up my daughters face similar to the way God did in the above shots:
This shot, using the Velvia/Vivid film simulation mode, exaggerated the colors in a tasteful way that reminded me why I love shooting with Fujifilm cameras. I know some hate it and call it Velveeta, but I’m not in that camp.
Here’s another shot that I intentionally took at 1 stop underexposed so I could avoid blowing out the back right corner. Obviously I need to brighten it up on post processing, but it’s a common shot that I do for a lot of my reviews so
I thought I’d include it:
This was also a 14 seconds exposure about 30 minutes before sunset in the shade, so I was happy with how much the lens and sensor gathered. Here’s one mnore that was done for 15 seconds with the Sepia film simulation applied in-camera:
In the oddest of things happened, the files got larger as the f-stop number got smaller! As a result, in a few cases I had to crop in order to reduce the size to get the file size under the 64MB limit of my hosting site,
Zenfolio!
The f/11 version had the same issue, but it required even more cropping so I just left it out of this review.
Film Simulation Modes
Ask any experienced film photographer what is the first thing that comes to mind when they think of Fujifilm and the answer will almost always be great color. What sets Fujifilm cameras apart from other digital cameras is that perfect
transition of color film to the digital area for amazing in-camera results. I’ve done this type of discussion many times in other articles, so I won’t do a comprehensive review.
Here are just a few samples of the same shot with some different in-camera film simulation modes taken using the handy film simulation bracketing drive mode. This allows you to push the shutter release button once and get up to three
different film simulation modes applied to the same shot.
Conclusion
I’m in love with Fujifilm all over again. It’s going to be tough returning this camera because I love the detail that the sensor captures, and the lens was great. Having 45-100mm zoom really gave me a lot of options with only one lens,
so I never really felt myself wanting for another lens.
I can easily recommend this camera for the serious photographer and unlike its predecessor, it’s not a tripod only camera best left for landscapes and studio work – this one really can do almost anything.
If you make a purchase using links found in this article, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you a penny more, but it does help to support future articles like this.
NOTE: This site requires cookies and uses affiliate linking to sites that use cookies.
If you enjoyed this article, please support future articles like this by making a donation or saving money by using my discount coupon codes. Either way, your support is greatly appreciated!
This blog is intended for freelance writing and sharing of opinions and is not a representative of any of the companies whose links are provided on this site.
The opinions provided are of Ron Martinsen alone and do not reflect the view of any other entity
It’s been since 2019 that I’ve reviewed a Fujifilm camera and that’s a shame. I forgot how much I’ve enjoyed the Fujifilm platform. If my memory serves me correctly the original X100 was the first X series camera I ever reviewed!
While there are numerous improvements that addressed my complaints of the early x100 and x100s, the form factor and purpose remain the same – and that’s a good thing. What’s more, the support for teleconverters means that you can get a little more functionality out of this fixed length permanently attached lens – if you so desire.
Overview
You can click the photo at the top of the article to get all the specs at B&H, so I’m not going to bore you with that. I’m also going to get closer to the modern era by introducing this camera with a video overview instead of a wall of words:
It’s a super well built and designed camera that really has few faults for someone interested in this formfactor and feature set.
Real World Images
Click here to see a gallery of some of the photos I took using the X100VI during my time reviewing it. As usual, these are all straight out of the camera with one notable exception. This camera supports HEIF, but Zenfolio doesn’t provide a good way to give you direct access to them, so I had to convert all HEIF files to JPEG (when applicable). Inline images were resized by Zenfolio, but you can download full size originals of the images that Lightroom converted from HEIF to JPG for inclusion in this gallery.
Here are my thoughts on a few photos that I found worth discussing:
Here’s one of the first pics I took with this camera right out of the box with the camera default settings and before I bothered to read the manual to refresh my memory on how to set the autofocus point:
As you can see the bokeh is fabulous and the detail is quite good in the raindrops despite, literally pointing and shooting like a newbie to cameras would do! If you want to know what do you really get over a cell phone, here’s a good place to start looking!
I was also pleased that for ISO 1250 that it looked this good to begin with. This particular photo was the exact in-camera JPEG as I hadn’t discovered yet that it supported HEIF at this point in the review.
Here’s another impressive handheld shot at only 1/35 sec yet the gloomy day required ISO 8000! The detail and default processing was amazing:
I was super impressed with the detail of the fine grain details in the center of the flower that didn’t get destroyed by in-camera noise reduction, and the default color was fantastic!
Here’s a jaw dropping example of the quality of this lens and the in-camera images event at ISO 5000:
I’m very pessimistic these days about lugging cameras around as cell phones have become so good, but this definitely reminded me that I might need to spend more time with the latest cameras again as this was a very impressive result!
Here’s a pretty boring photo, but again these were camera default settings doing pure point and shoot (except I did manually set the aperture). In this case I was too lazy to lay on the ground, so I just held the camera down at the level of the slug, tapped the screen like I’d do with my phone and took several photos:
This did pretty good knowing how I took the shot – especially with a 23mm lens not known for being a good focal length for macro photography.
On a camping trip to the North Cascades in Washington, I woke up to see this beautiful scene so I grabbed the camera and just did a quick snap before going back to bed.
This shot would be one of my first experimentations with a large f stop number to see if there have been massive improvements with diffraction, but ultimately that didn’t appear to be the case.
A little later I’d try again (below), but still the trees in the background are pretty soft for f/16:
In brighter conditions at a low ISO, the f/16 results were significantly better so the poor quality of the previous two photos may have been attributed to the fog and losses caused by noise reduction.
By this point I had also enabled the Velvia film simulation mode which Fujifilm is famous for, and it did not disappoint. The colors were amazing for this scene – if you like vivid images. If not, there’s a wide variety of film simulations to suit your taste.
I love the Velvia film simulation in the woods, but some might be turned off with how it crushes some of the shadow areas as shown at the base of the trees in this shot:
It also gives the water a more of an unnatural tint so some might find it better to manually process a shot like this from raw to get the best results.
Without resorting to manual settings or flash, I just took this picture of Kai (yeah, he’s grown up) the way a newbie would using default settings:
This is a type of shot where modern phones with their in-camera HDR can’t be beat – the results are very disappointing, so amateurs will need a better understanding of light (e.g., turn Kai into the light and avoid harsh backlight) or they’ll be frustrated compared to what they see they can accomplish with their phone.
Case in point, here’s what a iPhone 13 Pro photo of Kai taken in the same exact spot looked like straight from the phone:
So, if your goal is to take advantage of the shadows and get a more creative lighting shot then iPhone will be frustrating, but if you want a no brainer shot that is easy and just does HDR perfectly, it’s still tough to beat the best smart phones.
Here’s another example where the lighting was much more favorable:
Yet, despite great light and God’s soft box being out in full force, with no exposure compensation the image was rather dark. Again, compared to the iPhone where the results were much more pleasing:
This made me suspect that the default metering was to blame, so had I changed that setting I could have got results that are actually superior to the iPhone.
This also made me think about selfies – the feature that smart phone users seem to love the most. While I was out on the lake with my wife, I took a shot of my ugly mug completely blind but using the eye auto focus feature:
This time, despite the sun setting with mediocre light, it did great. I’m also pleased to report that my old face didn’t destroy the camera. The Velvia mode made my skin appear a little more red than I’d like, but the rest of the scene looked great.
I was very satisfied with the quality of the lens and the super sharp details found in so many of the photos I took:
This combined with great high ISO performance and visually satisfying colors (IMHO), made me happy to have this camera with me for my trip to the mountains.
I got a chance to give the burst mode a shot out on the ice, and while my framing was terrible, the results were good for this class of camera. Shooting on ice is tough so this is where you’ll need to experiment with the exposure compensation (+2 in this case), the white balance (florescent), and much more:
For the shots in this series I used the eye autofocus to see what it could do and I was satisfied with the results. I sucked, but the camera did its part. The iPhone was much easier to use, but I preferred the color I got using the X100 VI.
Video
While I did experiment a little bit with the video features, those who know me know that I’m not really a videographer. As a result, I can only say that it offers a wide variety of formats and settings that are certain to be superior to results found on a phone,
Viewfinder
The viewfinder on this camera supports both optical as well as digital, and that’s a good thing. The optical offers a traditional photography experience whereas the digital offers a way to see photos as they will appear on your computer or phone even in the harshest sunlight. It also provides a way to save battery when you elect to enable the EVF and turn off the rear display.
Conclusion
Once again I was reminded of the magic of Fujifilm and wasn’t disappointed one bit. Thanks to the Q menu, the touch screen and great controls, I was able to quickly dial in my favorite settings in a hurry to get the shots that I wanted. While I haven’t included many of those photos here for personal reasons, I do find this to be an extremely easy camera to use for those who understand the settings and features it offers.
I never had any battery life issues and could easily go a few days under normal usage without having to worry about recharging. When I did, I appreciated the support for USB-C to get a quick charge right in the camera.
Overall, this is a camera for photographers – not newbies – mainly because the best results will be achieved by knowing how to dial in the best settings. If you want smartphone results, use a smartphone, but if you are wanting better control over the lighting, color, shadows, and shutter speed, then this camera is going to be much more satisfying to use. If that's you, then I highly recommend this camera.
Where to Buy?
CLICK HERE to learn more or buy today, or click here see other great cameras in the Fujifilm X-Series line up.
Disclosure
If you make a purchase using links found in this article, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you a penny more, but it does help to support future articles
NOTE: This site requires cookies and uses affiliate linking to sites that use cookies.
If you enjoyed this article, please support future articles like this by making a donation or saving money by using my discount coupon codes. Either way, your support is greatly appreciated!
This blog is intended for freelance writing and sharing of opinions and is not a representative of any of the companies whose links are provided on this site.
The opinions provided are of Ron Martinsen alone and do not reflect the view of any other entity
f/13 @ 62mm for 1/125 sec at ISO 125
