Yesterday was an early start with a 7am train journey to London for our first ever documentary course in London. A huge thank you to Dot, Debbie, Helen, Guy & Chris for joining us on this day. Documentary photography is without a doubt one of the hardest genres of photography to master & to teach.
A lot of the moments are over so quickly that it is hard to share that moment but you can teach techniques to make an image once you see that moment. For me documentary photography by its definition is to document the happening of something. To stop someone in the street and take their picture is not documentary , it is environmental portraiture. A different thing altogether. I did make each photographer approach someone and try and get a portrait so there was a little of that also but most of the day was about looking at the ordinary , looking at a situation and making an image from it. Everyone was armed with a 50mm lens so we were all looking at the same thing. It was not the aim of the day to photograph all that is London particularly but to use the streets to make imagery from it. A lot of the imagery have people in them, some don’t and it is all about looking at something in a different way and I hope that’s what we did throughout the day.
Making pictures not taking pictures, a huge difference.
A quick group shot before the heavens opened!!
