Professional Photography : education

The Critique and Show Can Be the Best Parts of a Workshop

Eileen Fritsch — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:15:00 GMT

In my last post, I talked about how to choose the photography workshop that’s best for you. I suggested that one good question to ask is how your work will be critiqued. At FirstLight Workshop, part of our model is to work with each photographer in a daily edit session. We provide a half-hour or so for a direct one-on-one session.

I encourage those students who are waiting for their edit sessions to pull up a chair up and listen, because the advice given during every edit session can prove to be one of the most educational aspects of our, or any, workshop.

We also do a daily show of our students’ best work. It is mandatory that all students be present for this, and I really want them to bring their voices to this. The daily show can open your eyes and creative spirit, because you may see how another photographer shot the horse round-up at dawn in Dubois. He may have shot it in a way you hadn’t even considered.

At the end of each workshop week, we invite residents of the community to our print show so they can see how the photographers at the FirstLight Workshop have depicted their lives. These shows are wonderful! Jay Kinghorn (my co-author on Perfect Digital Photography, long-time FirstLight instructor, and our IT guy) uses our two 44-in. HP Designjet Z3100 printers to output large prints of each student’s best photos. Each student receives four or five 13 x 19-in. prints as well as one 18 x 24-in. print.We chose to use HP Professional Satin Photo Paper for all of the prints, after we discovered that prints with a lot of contrast or deep blacks didn’t look their best on the fine-art paper we’d been using for some prints.

Every photographer I know has favorite papers for different looks, but we wanted one paper surface that would provide the visual and surface feel we wanted for all the types of images our students were shooting. Our print shows generally feature a mix of black-and-white images, portraits, and landscapes, and HP’s Professional Satin Photo Paper really covers the bases beautifully. We have yet to find that image that doesn’t “glow” with this paper surface.

I rent/borrow gallery space in which to hang the show. Hanging the show is fairly simple. We inset the photos so the image has a one- to three-inch white border. This creates a simple matte feel without adding a mind-boggling amount of work! Our hanging system is usually equally simple: clear pushpins. Not fancy, but the images are so powerful that no one has yet to complain about this inexpensive, fast and non-obtrusive hanging method.We hang the show for the final night of the workshop. The students contribute elbow grease in cutting prints, organizing the groupings, and hanging the show.

In our Dubois workshop in Wyoming in July, I was up in the workshop HQ finalizing the show when Jeff Vanuga, one of our FirstLight instructors, came up to me to tell me we had a problem in the gallery. The students had finished hanging their work and were standing in front of their panels with big grins, not moving.

Initially, when we took the show down we would give the smaller 13x19 prints to the subjects who were in attendance the night of the show. Now, the shows have become so popular that we leave them hanging in the community for a week or two. Our students leave a self-addressed mailing tube and we send each of them their large print post-event.

Photographing Strangers: Consider Your Camera a Validation Tool

Eileen Fritsch — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 10:21:00 GMT

By Jay Dickman

Even after 38 years of shooting for a living, I am always amazed at how my camera can open doors into the lives of people I might not otherwise meet—both in the US and internationally. Journalistic photographers such as myself are constantly approaching someone to ask permission to take his or her photograph.

It’s part of our business. But it’s a task that many aspiring pro photographers (and even some established pros) find intimidating. Walk up to a perfect stranger and ask to spend time photographing them? What if they say “no”?

Whether I’m in Delhi or Dallas, if I see someone doing something intriguing, I won’t hesitate to approach that individual and explain that I am fascinated by what they’re doing. Everyone I approach this way seems to enjoy having their activities validated as relevant or interesting. Thus, a camera can be a tool of validation.

Still, I understand that it can take new photographers some time to overcome their innate reluctance to approach strangers. That’s why when photographers attend one of my FirstLight Workshop sessions, I make it a point to pre-scout locations and pre-arrange permissions before giving students their assignments to go out and shoot. If I can eliminate that often frightening dynamic of approaching a stranger, it will help get my students into the process of shooting more quickly and allow them to fully immerse themselves in capturing their subject(s).

Some workshop participants may find this hard to believe, but over the past 30+ years, I can probably count on two hands the number of times I’ve been refused when I asked to take stranger’s picture. The key to getting permission to photograph a stranger is showing a sincere interest in both your potential subject and what they are doing at the time you encounter them.

Teach a Kid, Share the Joy

Eileen Fritsch — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 21:32:00 GMT

By Jon Canfield.

I recently had the opportunity to give a talk on photography to a group of high school kids. Walking into the room it was pretty obvious that a good number of them were there because they had to be, not because it was something interesting or meaningful.

By the time I was done though, most of the glazed looks had disappeared. Sure, there were still a couple of students who could have cared less if I was talking about photography or how to mash potatoes, but that’s typical of any group. It seems like everyone these days has a cellphone with an embedded camera in it, and kids are accustomed to snapping and sharing photos with their friends. I found that more girls in the group had pocket-sized digi-cams, while the guys were more likely to just have the cellphone.

What was really interesting though was how few of these photos, regardless of how they were taken, were ever seen in print. The kids view them on their cellphones, or maybe on MySpace, but none of them had printed their photos! I had a few cameras with me that I loaned to the kids, and we went around the campus doing some shooting while I explained things such as composition and what type of lighting to try for. Then we all went back to the classroom to review images. I showed everyone’s shots on the whiteboard with a projector, to laughs and in a couple of cases groans, mentally taking note of the best of each kid’s shots.

While talking some more about what drew me into photography, places I’d been, and such, I was printing these images out on the small photo printer I had with me. At the end of the session, I passed out the photos to the surprised group, and it was like they had rediscovered something new.There’s just something different about seeing your photo on paper than on screen that somehow makes it more real.

Will any of these kids get into photography? I couldn’t tell you for certain. But I do know two things: There were a lot of smiles when I left (hopefully not because I left!); and there was a good feeling inside me for having shared something I enjoy.

The Golden Age of Photography: Part Two

BlogArchive — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 13:29:00 GMT

By David Saffir

I just finished teaching the three-day Imagemaking for Photographers workshop on the Central Coast of California. Our students included a mix of professionals and serious amateurs. Skill levels ranged from many years of experience with digital to “I bought this thing (a digital SLR) three months ago, and….”

We performed our field work in a number of environments under a variety of conditions. We shot at night, at pre-dawn twilight, in full sunlight, at sunset, and in canyons in deep shade. We shot still life, landscapes, and wildlife. We supplemented the field work with midday classroom sessions on camera setup, image preparation and correction, and printing.

Several things greatly impressed me during the seminar. First, the knowledge level of photographers is not only improving steadily, but the tempo of this growth is noticeably faster. I believe this can be attributed largely to the rise of social networks on the Web and increasingly easy Internet communications. For example, automated feeds from blogs such as this one have streamlined my daily reading. This has given me time to do other things (like shoot!).

Something else that struck me was that the newer DSLR cameras are extremely well made and produce images of extraordinary quality. Plus, they are much easier to use. Shooting at high ISO, cameras from both Canon and Nikon handled noise issues very well, including low light and night photography. Many of the students own these cameras.

The improvements in the cameras, along with parallel improvements in software such as Adobe Camera RAW, make it pretty straightforward for any photographer to shoot RAW and like it. Not one photographer in the class was using JPEGs. All saw the RAW file format as an advantage—both in image quality and creative options in image development.

Last, but not least, I was impressed by how far printing technology has come. In the workshop, we used HP Photosmart Pro B9180 printers. Images printed on a variety of media showed excellent color rendering, shadow and highlight detail, and dimensionality.

What I find most exciting is that the combination of these improvements in digital imaging hardware and software has made it far easier for photography students to concentrate on creativity-exploring ideas, and producing images that speak from the heart. As I saw for myself, this remarkable progress beyond the early technological hurdles of digital photography isn’t just a theory—it’s real.

The Wonderful World of Flickr

BlogArchive — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 13:53:00 GMT

By Marc Aguilera

Flickr is a great place for the new amateur, the accelerated semi-pro photographer, and working professional photographer. The flickr community is vast and amazing and I never get bored of looking at images from my contacts in the community.

I have had a flickr account since July 14, 2004. The first shot I posted was from my Samsung cameraphone of two wonderfully charming young girls named Branwen and Rhianon who are the children of my good friend Alan. I now have over 1200 images (which is not that many compared to other flickr users) and over 250 contacts. I belong to a few hundred groups and administer five, including a color management group and a group devoted to digital printing. Images are put into sets and collections of sets to make it easier to organize. I currently have 40 sets. I also have a Pro Account which gives me unlimited storage, uploads, bandwidth, and sets, as well as permanent archiving, and ad-free browsing and sharing. Amazingly, it only costs $24.95/year.

I often just love to explore and see if I can find an image of something abstract or seemingly rare. For instance, the other day I entered “Babirusa” and found dozens of images of the wonderful pig-like animal native to Sulawesi. I also looked for images of Latvia (a country I have always wanted to visit and came across some amazing landscapes by marika_te).

Because my wife and I own a 1965 classic 122s model Volvo, I recently looked to see if there were any images of that particular model on the site. Amazingly, I found over 100 images and several groups devoted to vintage Volvos.

One of the most popular groups is the Shooting to Learn Group, which is devoted to learning and exploring the photographic craft. The group is moderated by Dawn Perry and hosts assignments ranging from specific techniques to monthly photo contests. It’s an excellent resource for developing your photographic skills.

I also really enjoy looking at my favorite images from other flickr members. Images range from the very simple to the extraordinarily complex and are a constant source of inspiration. It’s amazing what we all photograph.

If you are worried about copyright, the default setting for all uploads is All Rights Reserved. If you wish you can attribute a Creative Commons license to protect and authorize the usage of your images.

I continue to be amazed by flickr, and I have only begun to scratch the surface. There is always something new and interesting being developed. The latest feature is called Places where you can browse images which have been Geotagged for a particular city. I searched for Riga, the capital of Latvia and found some amazing images from architecture to urban landscapes.

In my opinion, Flickr represents the future of the digital imaging community. It is a wonderful world for photographers, and if you haven’t yet visited, I would encourage you to do so.