Over the summer I visited Kiev, Kherson and Odessa in Ukraine to shoot additional images for a book I have been working on for close to 18 months. The book will feature funerary images from cemeteries in Ukraine where the tradition is to put portraits and sometimes sculptures on graves.

These images were taken to supplement earlier shoots which also included Kharkov and Poltava.

I used a Sony SLT 99 full frame digital together with 50 F1.4 and 28 F2.8 old Minolta lenses. I find both the sharpness and colour fidelity of these lenses beats the 28-105 zoom lens I also use with this camera and using fixed focal lengths makes me take a more considered approach to image making, avoiding the temptation to zoom the lens rather than adjust the camera viewpoint.

Using the cameras image stabilisation and these faster lenses also allows me to shoot mostly hand held, even in less than optimal light and still get sharp results. I find that the ISO 200 setting yields close to grainless images even when printed up to a meter and a half on the longest edge (I shoot using an aspect ratio of 3:2, similar to traditional 35 mm film).

An image taken on my most recent shoot in Ukraine