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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A typical scene of family life on the boats at dusk
