F8 & Eric Kim Street 'projects' workshop review - Aug 2014

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.

Interviewed on Eric Kim's Street Photography Blog

In March 2012 we ran a street photography workshop with Eric Kim from Los Angeles in Hong Kong, it was a great success with 24 very happy clients over the course of the weekend.  Eric recently asked me if I could do a quick interview for his blog, so I'm just re-posting it here for anyone who wishes to view it: CLICK HERE TO SEE THE INTERVIEW WITH F8 PHOTOGRAPHY ON ERIC KIM'S WEBSITE

When Eric was in Hong Kong I also interviewed him on video, you can see that video below (if doesnt appear immediately, just refresh the page)....

Eric Kim interview in Hong Kong from F8 Photography Ltd on Vimeo.

Thanks for taking the time to visit our blog, if you like our blog and website, please ‘like’ us on our public Facebook page and share this story with your friends with the Facebook and twitter links below.  You can also subscribe to our blog via the RSS link below.

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.

OMD goes to Manila

(street scene in Manila) NOTE ABOUT PROCESSING:  All images here are shot on the Olympus OMD with various prime lenses.  They were then all processed in Lightroom 4 with 1 click presets from 'VSCO film 02' using only their Fuji Superia 800 for colour or Fuji Neopan 1600 settings for black and white.  These are my favourite film simulators and make any digital camera RAW files sing instantly with 1 click.  More information can be found here at the VSCO website on these presets.

So, after a successful trip to Cambodia using the Olympus OMD  the previous week, I decided another trip was in order, this time the other direction from Hong Kong, heading South East to test the EM-5 on the streets of Manila in the Phillipines.

Now some things must be mentioned about Manila for any budding photographers wishing to travel there.....BE CAREFUL.  As much as I liked the city, for sure there is a lot of things that could easily go wrong here....some of the poorer parts of the city are for sure totally unsafe for westerners to venture into alone, and carrying expensive camera gear around is only going to attract unwanted attention.  Like many other places I have visited you must stay streetwise, don't flash expensive gear, leave your nice watch at home and most of all use common sense.  Walking around at 2am in a poor neighbourhood in Manila is going to end in tears for sure....

(Traffic wardens in Manila....ummm whats the point...)

The first thing I noticed when walking around various parts of Manila was the traffic.....it seemed there was complete chaos on the roads, not dissimilar to Hong Kong at rush hour, only here it seemed to be the same all day long....so i chose the best options of transport, my own two feet :-)

When I did travel between districts I used the famous 'Jeepney' buses that can be found everywhere, they are great fun to drive around in, extremely cheap and provide good photo opportunities from the back door, open windows and even of the people inside.

The first day I was in Manila I was lucky with the weather, the light was great, it was hot, just a nice afternoon for strolling around exploring the city.  Lunchtime is clearly siesta time in Manila with people strewn all over the place getting an afternoon nap, kind of reminded me of my parents place in Spain where the same thing happens every day.

(siesta time in Manila, its sleep, read or relax...)

The few people that weren't asleep were having an easy time playing board games in the street.  This kind of place was helping me relax a lot even after a few hours, as I always compare with Hong Kong, which seems to be really non-stop (part of the reason I love to escape as often as I can), you really don't see this kind of lifestyle in Hong Kong, despite the heat, people are running around at full pace 24/7, at least in the inner city where I work and live, so its really nice to see people taking time out and 'smiling'!!!

(A lovely lady who was more than happy to pose for photographs in the street)

Like most asian cities, the streets were full of children playing and kids always make great subjects for me, they are innocent yet their faces tell a thousand stories, something i noticed recently when shooting a scene in Hong Kong was that everyone in the scene was just going about their business apart from 3 kids in the scence, all of them were looking directly at me....maybe kids would make the best street photographers...as they are very very aware of their surroundings and dont miss a trick :-)

(happy kids (and dogs) playing in the street in Manila)

Of course some people view photographers a little more suspiciously, but despite that, a big smile and a handshake go a long way, and as usual, everyone I met and befriended were absolutely fine being photographed.  Even the gangster looking dudes who try to look 'tough' guy tend to break a big smile when I show them their photo and tell them they look like 'James Bond'....flattery gets you everwhere...

(locals in Binondo district, Manila)

The variety of people and colour around the city really attracted me, it really is a bustling metropolis and a great photography location.  As I mentioned earlier discretion is the better method with camera gear (as is pretty much anywhere in my experience), so using the little Olympus OMD was actually perfect (yet again), as it allowed me to shoot discreetly from the hip using the touchscreen with its super fast autofocus.  This is the 2nd time I have used it travelling in a month, and it didn't skip a beat at all, ultra reliable....I thought I would miss my Leica M9...but if I'm honest, this thing is far more functional, never ever stutters like the Leicas do (thats a simple fact that sometimes the M9 just won't react when you press the button...) and the image quality is amazing, of course not superior to a full frame camera...but most of our work is going on the internet or medium sized prints, I am quite positive to 99% of people, there is no visible difference in image quality, and those that think they can tell a difference on a processed image (especially at web size images)....well their name is Pinnochio I'm afraid....

(diverse characters around town, security, driver, and the oldest paperboy!)

A quick note again on the presets that I have used to process these images, they are from VSCO, and are the simplest and most powerful presets you can get in my opinion for Lightroom, ACR or Aperture.  They really do emulate the film looks well....how do i know this....because I shoot a fair bit of these exact films on my Mamiya 7ii and my Contax G2 and scanned files have very similar tones and characteristics to these digital files once processed.....so if you are looking for a filmic simulator that takes seconds to process your RAW files, these are worth a look for sure.

(Processed with VSCO Fuji Neopan 1600 or Fuji Superior 800 settings)

Whilst I was in Manila, I did some shooting in a very poor area called Ulingan in Tondo, probably the roughest and most dangerous area of Manila, the reason being I want to work with a charity there called Project Pearls, and I will be heading back to Manila now that they have made contact in a few weeks to do some video work with them.  You can see the blog post and video of the images shot there last time at this link, its really quite amazing to see the resilience of these people who live and work there.

For other posts I have written recently with images of the OMD please see the links below:

LINK TO BLOG POST: OMD shooting in Ulingan, Tondo, Manila

LINK TO BLOG POST: OMD goes to Cosplay event in Hong Kong

LINK TO BLOG POST: OMD goes to Cambodia

Thanks for taking the time to visit our blog, if you like our blog and website, please ‘like’ us on our public Facebook page and share this story with your friends with the Facebook and twitter links below.  You can also subscribe to our blog via the RSS link below.

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

No Photos allowed.....or are they? (VIDEO)

Cat Street market stall advertising 'NO PHOTOS'

In recent news here in Hong Kong there has been much controversy about photographers rights to shoot in public places (in particular in front of large branded designer stores, etc).  Security guards have been misinformed by their employers about what is 'public space' in front of a shop and therefore this has led to confusion, aggressive and sometimes even violent confrontations between photographers and staff.

These big stores are not the only places that try to 'enforce' a ban on photographers, even small market stalls have signs up saying 'no photos', 'no cameras', or 'photo - $200', etc.

To those of us in the know, this is basically outrageous behaviour on behalf of the shopkeeper, trying to create some kind of martial law around their own property, thinking they can control what you do with your camera in a public space.

Now, I don't want to confuse the issue of photographing people, I am well aware as should everyone be that some individuals do not like having their photograph taken, especially without permission, and I  completely understand the issues surrounding that.  This is not what this blog post is about, it is purely about having the right to shoot an interesting market stall, a shop facade or interesting building without having to worry about consequences or thinking that you are doing something wrong - you are not, its well within your rights to take photographs.

This short video we shot in an hour or so the other day shows a quick walkaround Central and Sheung Wan in Hong Kong shooting a few market areas where they have these signs.  I have heard many people say they get confronted in these places so thought I would try to see for myself if we had similar problems and I highlight in the video the ways in which we shoot to try to avoid confrontation.

This is the first DSLR video that Gurung RJ has shot with very little instruction in advance, so I must thank him for his efforts in helping me put this together.

Also a special thanks to Will Gell who has very kindly allowed me to use his music for various projects, amazing musician, check out his albums here:

Please remember when out shooting that you WILL upset some people sometimes, that's unfortunately the nature of the beast with street photography, some people will always react negatively no matter how polite you are, maybe they just had a bad day, or maybe they just grumpy...thats life, its a choice you make if you wish to become a street photographer, never take it personally, and try not to respond in the same manner, keep smiling, say thank you and continue on your way.

Previous recent blog posts that relate to the same issues are linked below, the first one has an extensive video shooting street photography in Kowloon with a GOPRO camera attached to the top of the Leica M9, linked together with the images that we captured during the walkabout:

HOW WE SHOOT STREET PHOTOGRAPHY IN HONG KONG (VIDEO)

DOLCE & GABBANA PROTEST FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS RIGHTS IN HONG KONG

Thanks for taking the time to visit our blog, if you like our blog and website, please ‘like’ us on our public Facebook page and share this story with your friends with the Facebook and twitter links below.  You can also subscribe to our blog via the RSS link below.

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