Who
Born under the blazing hot sun near the equator, raised in the frozen remote northern wilds, and now making our lives in the Tokyo concrete jungle for the past decade. We love blue skies, stationery, photography, design, 18th century British poets, afternoon naps atop sun-dappled tatami mats, autumnal food, latte art (and lattes), girls in high heels and guys in fashionable scarves.
What
Bluefiresweetly is devoted to stories and photos centring around people, places, things and moments.
- Within people, we share glimpses into the hidden sides of those around us which others may not see normally; a cross between posed photography, impromptu street snaps and more in-depth interviews.
- In places, we introduce sections of the city and country - Tokyo, Japan - we live in and love.
- For things, we present the items that we use and rely on in our everyday lives. It is our strong believe that when it comes to material possessions, it behooves one to seek out the distinctive and well-designed and espouse quality over quantity, reliability over disposability, distinction over mass-produced genericism. Such things are often not cheap, so we review them such that you can make a decision about whether they are worth your money or not.
- In thoughts we discuss in greater depths things such as workflows, life, and generally anything better suited for an essay.
- Finally, moments covers just that - the fleeting, lingering passing instances of the everyday, flitting by in an instant, then tumbling around and over in our heads with a forced remonstrative ache. We capture them here so we can look back on them in several decades and remember when we were young, once, and living out the best years of our lives.
When
We try to post at least one entry within people, places, things or thoughts per week, with an additional moments photo or two per week as well.
You can find our constant stream-of-consciousness ramblings about design, art, photography, life in Tokyo and Teh Intarwebs in general over on Twitter or else follow us on Instagram for amazing photos of whatever dessert we happen to be stuffing in our faces at the moment.
How
We have a deep respect for well-designed tools; tools that have been deeply thought-out, tools that have been beautifully-designed, tools that simultaneously inspire you and enable you to give form to the ideas that you hold in your head.
Here then, are some of the tools which we use in our everyday lives, both professionally and privately. We hope that you will find them as useful and pleasurable to use as we do.
Photography
Primary photography is accomplished through a mix of a few different bodies:
- Our main shooter, the Canon EOS 1DX Mark I
- Our backup shooter, the Canon 5D Mark III
- Our everyday carry camera, the Sony RX100 Mark IV
- Our travel camera, the Leica Q
- Our experimental lightweight kit, the Fuji X-T2
On our DSLRs we tend to use a mix of the following:
- Our bread-and-butter wedding and general portrait prime, the Canon 85mm f/1.2L II USM
- Our everyday carry multi-use favourite, the Canon 50mm f/1.2L USM
- Our low light indoor hotel-shoot favourite, the Sigma 24mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art
- Our general purpose zoom, the Canon 24-70 f/2.7L II USM
- Our ultra-wide architcture lens, the Sigma 12-24mm f/5 DG HSM Art
- Our general-purpose wide-angle, the Canon 16-35 f/2.8L I USM
- Our outdoor and portrait zoom, the Canon 70-200 f/2.8L USM IS
We process our work on the following setup:
- Apple 15” Macbook Pro
- Dual Apple 27” Thunderbolt Displays
- Apple iPad Pro
- Adobe Lightroom CC
- Adobe Photoshop CC
- Niksoft SilverEfex Pro 2
For more information, see our thoughts on our photographic workflow.
Typography
Bluefiresweetly is primarily set in Calluna for article headers, FF Tisa Pro for body and Source Code Pro for monospaced text.
Additionally, we use a few other fonts such as League Gothic, Zzyzx, Droid Sans and Lato in a few extremely limited cases (most notable in the titles overlaying the hero imagery and site breadcrumbs)
Online
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