I’ve just started a Creative Photography course at Garage Studios in Brighton with fashion photographer Kevin Mason (aka DarkDaze). Having picked up my first DSLR at Christmas time, I’m trying my hardest to get to grips with how it all works, all the different functions, lenses etc and have been rather consumed with this instead of really thinking about what I’m taking.
It was a great encouragement listening to Kevin talk about emotion over technique and creating a story or journey of one photo to the next. We looked at several photographers from the 20th century, Walker Evans, Bruce Davidson, Dorethea Lange, but I really liked Garry Winogrand. Winogrand is famous for his street photography and un-posed spontaneous scenes. He waited for moments of collision.
I think I have just worked out that I missed the point of the first week’s exercise, “photograph a journey”. As I mentioned, I was consumed with each photo and so, tried to take different styles of photos, landscape, portrait, colour, black and white, to cover each base.
I look forward to week 2’s exercise where I can try and take and edit the photos into a narrative. Why would I put the photo into black and white, why portrait, why would I swap from portrait to landscape? It’s quite a difficult thing to do – to think about the shot but take it spontaneously, to think about composition and layout but not to worry about technique, and put the photo’s content over its form. It’s easier said than done.
Comments
really looking forward to seeing how you get on!
really looking forward to seeing how you get on!
Thanks Noodles it’s a wicked course and trying to find the time to do it justice! post up some images here.
Thanks Noodles it's a wicked course and trying to find the time to do it justice! post up some images here.