ASCA Regional Championships, Perth Optus Stadium

Back in November, I had the opportunity to photograph one of the baristas from Veneziano Coffee Roasters who was participating in the brewing category of the regional coffee championships hosted by Australian Specialty Coffee Association. While I’m a coffee drinker and enjoy a variety of coffees from espresso coffee to cold brew and pour overs, specialty coffee competitions was a whole new world to me. I learned quite a bit about the coffee competition in my few hours of hanging out to watch and photograph the event.

I had a lot fun doing some event and brand-related photography. Photographically, the biggest challenge was the lighting and exposure. The event was hosted in a function room at Optus Stadium with a gorgeous view of Perth city. Given it was a bright, sunny and cloudless morning, the main stage was very much backlit. Getting a good exposure of the event and people on stages was the biggest challenge.

For this event, I photographed using the Fujifilm X100F and the Fujifilm X-T10 with the 35mm f1.4 lens. Even though zooms are more convenient for event style photography shoots, I really enjoy using prime lenses. The 23mm focal length on the X100F and the 35mm gave me the perspectives I needed for this event. Shooting in the raw format gave me the detail and dynamic range I needed when I edited the images to tease out the correct exposure. I really appreciated how snappy and fast the X100F focused and shot at. The 35mm f1.4 is one of the older and slower-focusing lenses on the Fujifilm lens lineup. Nonetheless I think it held up well. I loved the quality of the images and the creamy bokeh created for this lens.

I’m not a big portrait shooter. but I really enjoyed taking all the candid shots and capturing the right moments and expressions to tell the story of the event. From the form-filling coffee-equipment prepping stage. Through to the main big event of telling the coffee-story to the judgement with matching background music.

I found this event to be a great experience as a photographer and hopefully can lead to other open doors in the future. It was good experience doing some branding/business photography by combining my two favourite things, coffee and photography. Thanks for stopping by today.

J.