Samo & Martin – wedding photojournalism workshops in autumn
[quote]Out whole experience is empty without the story.[/quote]
Let’s say for example – Spain, the place on the earth I really love. It’s connected to the people that opened my mind – I mean my first Spanish couple, Paz and Carlos. I met them a few years ago, they wanted pure documentary photojournalism – not typical wedding photography. They wanted photographer to be invisible. To focus on people. People and things as they are. I remember question about details. Do you want us to shoot details? No, just focus on the people. They wanted to see all the things by the people, but mostly all the people. All smiles, tears, emotions. So Spain brings me memory of Paz and Carlos’ wedding – the memory ot the biggest encounter with myself. To be on wedding and not disturb the real life, emotions. To capture it as it is. To tell the truth. Non polished glamour wedding images, but pure real life captured in transparent form. Come back to pure traditional photojournalism. To roots of the story. To connection to the things we see. Most of the photographers used to say: we are photojournalism. But honestly, most of the time it’s because the reason that they need an excuse to tell to the Client: this is photojournalism, you cannot expect anything, that’s real life. Well, a big mistake in thinking – photojournalism is about telling the story to the viewer.
And stories need to be told. They are not just series of pictures. This is main difference – story is the smell of the day. The connection to real life. The story is something real. It happened, we were there. We’ve seen it. We are witness of something that has priceless value. But the value is true only if we are able to tell the story.
I remember Paz crying during watching proof pictures after the wedding. Then I remember that we were asked to shoot birthday of Paz’s best friend – Gabina, in Madrid. It was the best prize in real life contest.
So workshop about telling the real stories. Building them. The skills to try. An encounter with ourselves. Our weakness. The change.
Since iceages people tell the stories. We, photojournalists, have pictures to replace the words. That’s the human experience with storytelling. In our aspect – pictures are words, but we need wisdom of choosing correct words to build the sentences, and whole story. So here comes the story building.
We want with Samo to share our experience, non conventional wedding photography as documentary photojournalism. A different approach to the weddings. We both have roots in press photojournalism. We both are hardcore wedding photojournalists by our thinking – composition, multilayered images, anticipation, storybuilding. This is nothing against doing pretty pictures. This is towards telling real stories by images. Bold, loud, full of life, fresh and delicious. We will show the path to shoot this lifestyle images. How to flow in any conditions, how to find subject on any wedding, how to build connection with the subject.
So the goal of this workshop is the encounter with a story. To tell the best story we can. We are like medieval bards. In some way, we are the part of the story. What are the rules, the random elements we need to predict and what is the main, heavy base.
What can you expect – extreme and fun exercises, assigment and review of the work, a very intense time with photography. Seeking for the subject of the story and thinking nonlinear. Pure documentary and photojournalistic work. Yes, very difficult questions to ask ourselves during the workshop and then, things to rethink, reanalyze. Multilayered images, digging into composition, playing with complex composition, understanding the lens, understanding models of exposure, thinking 3dimensional on flat surface of the picture, composing while picking the moment, story building. With some aspects we will come back to the roots, basics, but frequently misunderstood or forgotten by many digital photographers.
We have modified the concept from the previous workshop. More active and more with photography. More things you will stay with for the future hard work. More things that changed us and build our skills. Like previous time – we provide printed booklets for you, so you will stay with our suggestions and tips in printed and handy form.
Be ready for a change. It’s right time and right place to do it. See you there.
