This is the first year in ages I haven’t managed to get a coast-to-coast roadtrip on the books. As a little consolation prize, this month I did get to make a quick drive from L.A. to Alabama for a couple of in-progress projects: a new shoot for Ton Magazine, and coverage for an environmental piece for the German magazine, Stern, en route.

Hopefully, I will be able to share some of that work soon, but in the meantime, I was grateful for four wheels and a few days on the open road.

I’m always happy to revisit laid back and lovely Birmingham, home to both the late, great Thornton Dial and Joe Minter, who still works every day on his incredible African Village in America. Trust me, if you’re a blue stater who sneers at some outdated, backwoods idea of Alabama, you’re missing out: the state in general is beautiful, but Birmingham in particular is a laid, back, lovely town filled with good humans, good hiking and excellent food. I couldn’t get a seat at current hot spot El Royale during the few days I was there, but ate well anyway: Automatic consistently serves the best oysters I’ve ever had in the Deep South, June Coffee is truly hip, and the 1907 classic, Bright Star, is always worth a trek down to nearby Bessemer. Unfortunately, the sprawling, red brick 1975 Century Plaza Mall, which I always made it a point to photograph anytime I passed through the region, has unfortunately been fully demolished and replaced by an Amazon warehouse since my last visit. Because of course it has. RIP.

*In the shadow of the long gone I. Rosen department store, once a mainstay in downtown Bessemer, just south of Birmingham.*

*The Bright Star, an Alabama institution since 1907.*

System Shift:

I had been a longtime user of Fujifilm GFX cameras, a groundbreaking system that has done more than any other to democratize medium format digital photography. Still, after three bodies and years of investment, I began to fall out of love with its unwieldiness and resented Fuji’s lack of a direct replacement for the no-nonsense, stills-focused GFX 50R. That “Texas Leica” is a major charmer, but is infuriating for day-to-day work, thanks to its molasses reflexes and fat soap bar ergonomics. The system advanced by leaps and bounds in just a few years, and my most recent GFX, the positively epic 100 II is easily one of the greatest cameras ever made. Still, I sold it this spring: every time I used it, it felt like heavy, expensive overkill, saddled as it was with a gigantic suite of video features I just couldn’t make any use of in a massive medium format body. It is the G-wagen of cameras, prodigiously capable, but absurd to drive to the mall. Oh, how I miss that viewfinder, though! The new GFX100RF is a cool concept, astoundingly small for medium format, but is let down by its boring f4 fixed lens and done in by the faster, better-built and far more flexible Leica Q3.

I replaced the GFX with a couple much speedier full-frame bodies for day to day work, and thought I could be happy without medium format for the time being. It took just a few weeks to realize I’d miscalculated. I decided that I’d have to return, but with a more focused approach to the format. I came to fully understand that a chunk of my work is actually better served by full-frame, so I no longer worried about building a massive, do-it-all medium format kit. All I needed was one superlative body for environmental portraits, architecture, and the sorts of on-the-road landscapes I most enjoy making. With these adjusted priorities, I sold some more gear, did a little digging, and found a killer deal on an almost-new Hasselblad X2D with a perfect 55V lens. Hasselblad has famously been sending these (very expensive) cameras out to YouTube influencers by the boatload, and I just so happened to luck into a great one (super nice guy) who had no use for such a slow camera. He let the body and lens go for about the price of a new body alone, and now I own a contemporary Hasselblad system for less than I sold the equivalent GFX and Fuji 55. Win win.

Learning use the X2D was an adjustment. It’s slow, rather unintuitive at first, and operationally unlike any system I’d ever used—even the delightfully weird, highly unconventional Leica SL-series are a comparative cakewalk to learn. A week in, I still sort of hated it. Slowly but surely, though, the logic of its interface and ergonomics began to sink in. The meditative, deliberate method to its madness became clear: slow as it is, the X2D with its leaf shutter, focused interface and insane sensor is, bar none, the best stills-focused modern camera on the market today. And it’s positively tiny compared to the GFX100 II. The color and texture of the files it produces feel like drum-scanned slide film: rich, accurate, subtle. And while Hasselblad lacks Fujifilm’s popular film simulations, I haven’t missed them at all—what feels brilliant on their gritty APS-C bodies can feel cartoonish on enormously-detailed 100 megapixel files.

The X2D is everything I wanted in a GFX 50R replacement: svelte, gorgeous, stabilized and ideal for stills work. Slow as it is, the X2D with its leaf shutter, focused interface and insane sensor is, bar none, the best stills-focused modern camera on the market today. The color and texture of the files its produces feel like drum-scanned slide film: rich, accurate, subtle.

In short, the X2D is everything I wanted in a GFX 50R replacement: svelte, gorgeous, stabilized and ideal for stills work. I haven’t made anything great with it yet, but I can’t wait to take this thing places.

Below are all X2D learning shots from the road, from California to Alabama and back.

Hasselblad to Birmingham

Tastes Good!