Over the past week or so we’ve been shouting on Twitter and Facebook about the seminar/workshop, whatever you want to call it we are planning for 26th and 27th November.
It’s really exciting for us because we will be inviting just a handful of our fellow wedding photographers to our studio in Bowness. They will be able to have a good look around, see our sample albums and the way we work on a day-to-day basis. It’s not just a chance for them to have a nosey, although they are very welcome. We are going to give them an insight into what makes us tick as documentary wedding photographers.
I’ve talked about this on here before but it is worth another mention. My choice to approach wedding photography the way I do was no more contrived than the pictures we make. As a young wedding photographer in the seventies and to almost the end of the eighties, I was always uncomfortable asking intelligent people to adopt contrived poses for the sake of making, what I considered to be an inaccurate record of the wedding day. That was the way all wedding photographers worked then. I don’t know if I understood why it felt uncomfortable but I know that the couples didn’t take to that sort of direction particularly well either, maybe it was because I was so young or maybe I just was not the right type of personality.
I had always been interested in the idea of photography as a means of telling stories. When I first got into photography, as a very young, smooth faced art student, I collected a series of books on photography from Time Life publishers. Those books drew a lot on the archive of Life magazine and photo-stories by the photojournalists that graced its pages. Photographers like W Eugene Smith, Margret Bourke-White and Alfred Eisenstaedt. It wasn’t long before I discovered Henri Cartier-Bresson and his, for me, life-changing essay, “The Decisive Moment” written in 1952 but just as valid now. I still love reading that essay, and I go back to it often. All of it struck a chord for me, but his idea that the photographer can be an observer, a collector of images and a re-teller of stories, but did not influence or manipulate beyond the selection process seemed to be in contrast to the way I had been trained to photograph weddings.
“…Our task is to perceive reality, almost simultaneously recording it in the sketchbook which is our camera. We must neither try to manipulate reality while we are shooting, nor manipulate the results in a darkroom. These tricks are patently discernible to those who have eyes to see…”
Henri Cartier-Bresson from “The Decisive Moment” 1952.
In 1988 a friend and fellow photographer, asked me to photograph his sister’s wedding. He knew what I thought of wedding photography at the time and sympathised with my interest in impartial story telling. So, with his sister’s blessing he suggested I work the way I had always wanted to. That was the start and by the mid nineties that approach had become fashionable and what I was doing was in demand.
There are some very important theories that go toward setting the philosophy and methodology of getting really successful, emotive, powerful story-telling pictures. There are techniques, methods and a set of personal ground rules that establish not just the look of the images we produce but our whole approach to wedding photography. So, in a nutshell, that is what we are going to be talking about on the 26th and 27th November.
As well as all that from me, the delegates will hear from Megan Henshall.
Megan is an expert in branding and marketing wedding and portrait photography businesses. She has worked with, and contributed to, the success of some of the biggest names in our industry. When it comes to numbers she knows her stuff. She is also very in tune with our typical customers (as if there was such a thing), she understands what it is our clients want from us. Because she is not a photographer, but works everyday with images, she sees our work and the work of the other photographers she works with, from a similar perspective to our clients. That means she is able to help our clients use our images in albums, frames or any other presentation that relate to the customer’s needs and desires. She will talk on those subjects and subjects that will help photographers set their price, brand and product range to fit the market they want to serve.
It’s all very well making stunning images and creating wonderful products but we photographers still have to convert that jumble of zeros and ones into recognisable images. In our business, as well as making some of the team's stunning images, that’s Josh’s domain.
He will give a presentation on our workflow, colour management (that includes how we get those punchy, film like black and whites), editing and processing. He will also talk about and demonstrate the JAD software we use to design our gorgeous Jorgensen albums.
If you are or aspire to be a documentary wedding photographer go to the link and register now.
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