Last weekend myself and Eric Kim ran a workshop here in Hong Kong. We had a nice group of mixed abilities from all over Asia and Europe, clients from Macau, Hong Kong, India, Vietnam and even as far away as Budapest in Hungary came to Hong Kong to spend the weekend shooting with our group and sharing ideas and learning some new tips and tricks. Eric introducing himself at the start of the workshop.

Winnie Ho shot this vibrant coloured image as part of her 'Through The Window' project.

The focus of this workshop was 'working on projects', so it was slightly more advanced that some of the basic street shooting style workshops, requiring a different approach to shooting on the streets. Some may find it easier being given a project to focus on, some find it harder to focus on 'telling a story' with a short sequence and tighter edit of images. Whichever way you approach it, for sure it will help develop visualisation skills for all photographers looking for a slightly different approach to their work.

Mainlander shopping spree, Hong Kong

End of first night...much beer is needed to soften the blows of the critiques :-)

The first evening of the workshop was spent reviewing clients existing portfolios that they were asked to bring along for critique. This is always a very valuable part of the workshop as it enables everyone to get to know each other, let down their barriers and showcase their current work. It also helps us to figure out which direction we think they may like to try next and after the workshop finishes to see how they have moved their benchmark up a level or two.

Sam and Oscar comparing their toys out on the streets.

The 2nd day is spent with various presentations in the morning (after lots of coffee and snacks), sharing some examples of our own projects and talking thoroughly as a group about everything that has been showcased that morning. After lunch we discuss potential ideas for projects with the group, share them all and let the clients pick 2 projects to work on over the rest of the weekend before their final presentations. This method proved to work very well, and the discussions brought out some great ideas for people to try.

A nice 'selfie' taken by Annie Gallivan as part of her project 'Shadow Play'.

Then, the group departed off, either alone, in pairs or under guidance from us where requested, to explore deep into Kowloon and Hong Kong Island for the rest of Saturday and Sunday morning, exploring their ideas, sharing feedback over dinner and fine tuning their visions before meeting back at the workshop base for Sunday lunch and to start the process of selection, editing and presentation.

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Sam checks his negatives on the 2nd evening after a day shooting.

Geoff has his contact sheets proofed by a friend at dinner.

People always underestimate the importance of being a strong self-editor, something that some people struggle with, so we used some techniques that are really useful in Lightroom to help the visual process, helping the group break down their portfolios to a very tight edit by the end of the day.

Geoffrey Chen, shooting on film for his 'Lust' project.

Final presentations were made individually, allowing each client to showcase their work and get up in front of a group and practice their presentation skills.

We had group discussions over the presentations, and gave our final thoughts to the clients.

Carolyn Kang - Up close and personal with her 'Portraits' project.

To finalise the workshop we have an excellent presentation from our good friend Jonathan Van Smit (flickr link), an acclaimed street shooter based in Hong Kong, well known amongst our community for his black and white close up street shooting in Kowloon. Jonathan has been a guest speaker at many of our workshops and always inspires others with his dedication, drive and passion for what he is doing. He has recently departed on a personal project in Israel, and we wish him the best of luck with that project and stay safe!!! More of Jonathan's work can be seen here.

Alex Haslam's contrasty black and white images were part of his 'Hidden Faces' project.

All said and done, the workshop was a great success, all client feedback has been positive, and I for one have seen some large improvements in portfolios of many of the clients as I have spent a lot of time with most of them before and am quite familiar with their work.

Alex explores the issues related to exposure when shooting with lens cap on...sorry mate, couldn't resist hehe.

Laszlo Szigeti - for his 'Reflections' project.

Below I would like to share some more images from the workshop, bearing in mind the clients only had less than 24 hours to produce their sets of images, these are some of the individual images, tagged with the name of their project to give context.

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Sam Lok, shooting on film for his 'Layers and Triangles' project.

Michelle Leung focussed her project around "Sham Shui Po'.

Harriet Pollard's project focussed on 'First Impressions', having just arrived from India a few weeks beforehand.

Jonathan Nguyen's project 'Old People' had a good look with his processing.

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Great work everyone, looking forward to the next workshops already.

F8 Photography runs workshops all over Asia, including travel photography in Cambodia, Japan and India all coming up in late 2014, please check out our website for more details on how to sign up for those, or check our blog for loads of reviews, slideshows and feedback from clients who have attended previous F8 Photography workshops around Asia.

F8 Photography also provides commercial photography and videography services, please see our main website for that or check out Gary's public page on Facebook to stay up to date with our latest images and what we are up to.

Thanks for all the support and keep shooting.

Click here to check out Gary's new facebook page, please 'like' it... Under advice from several of my photographer buddies (in particular Ian Taylor who I have been shooting with in Cambodia the last few days, who's work can be seen here), I have been encouraged to launch a facebook fan page to show some of my work to a wider audience.

Although I am not entirely comfortable with the term 'fan page', I do understand that it can bring business as well as a much bigger audience to my work, in particular the recent theme in Cambodia with the medium format digital camera has attracted a lot of interest and requests for prints....so I guess I must be doing something right.

This recent series is kind of a return to form for me in some ways, ironically when I switched to Leica a few years ago for travel photography I stopped shooting this style of work (I used to shoot it extensively with Canon digital, using variable ND filters and lights in the field), then stopped altogether to minimise my kit and go 'rangefinder', and now having recently acquired a Pentax 645D medium format digital camera, it really suits that style of photography, rather than the quick, street style shooting I have become accustomed to.

So for me its 2 things, a chance to slow myself down and take my time over each image, as well as explore a new format that I haven't tried digitally, and for sure the camera is big, but the results and detail are worth the effort for me, I've been shooting it less than 2 weeks, and I'm already deeply attached to this system.

Please take a look at the facebook page and share with your friends if you think they may be interested in my style of photography.

Click here to check out Gary's new facebook page, please 'like' it...

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F8 Photography provides commercial photography and photography and video training workshops, more details can be found via the ‘courses and workshops’ link and upcoming events via the front page of our website.