Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2013/01/13
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Hi Leo Gee if you had of attended one of the Leica International Workshop Seminars on Cape Cod with Tina and myself. I bet we'd have saved you a ton of money and taught you exactly the identical information you received from Peter. Quite frankly with tougher photo challenges covering the Cape Cod area towns and villages! "PARIS as a subject?" Man it's a piece of cake to shoot there! You can almost close yer eyes, put the camera on auto, squeeze down on the shutter release and do a pirouette and you'll have something magical in every frame! :-) Cape Cod area? Now that's where you sort out the real photographers from the wanna be's! Actually if you've been paying attention to many of my "Photo explanations on the LUG?" I've very nearly explained and repeated Peter's many simple things on many occasions over the past 10 years or so.. Your description of Peter's presentations sounded exactly what I taught for Leica on Cape Cod for 16 years, at Yale on a few occasions and other Canadian universities for a decade or so between assignments in other countries . And to professional photographer associations in Canada, the USA and including Malaysia ! Unfortunately the LUG planned seminar cruise a couple of years ago with me that many had signed on for. Had to be cancelled due to my wife's medical situation, eventually passing away. I have been asked by several LUG members to put together another seminar. It's under consideration. However the Leica Seminar, "Vision Quest" in Wisconsin is on again this year 2013 for it's second year this fall. Obviously more information later as it will have many improvements to challenge photographers. Stay tuned! As I said, "Paris is a piece of cake almost for a blind man!" Wisconsin around Sister Bay? Man you better be as hot as a fire cracker as the real photo challenges are there making you see more and harder to find the master pieces! Keep tuned. cheers, Dr. ted ----- Original Message ----- From: "leo wesson" <leowesson at gmail.com> To: "Leica Users Group" <lug at leica-users.org> Sent: Sunday, January 13, 2013 11:43 AM Subject: [Leica] Turnley Workshop Hi All, Several folks have asked me to say a bit about the workshop that I took in September with Peter Turnley. Why a workshop? I?m a strong believer that you should always be learning and pushing your boundaries. It can be really hard to do that within the confines of your everyday life. I shoot a lot, but most of it is for clients and not what I would be shooting if left to my own direction. I have found that it helps to go meet photographers who you admire and spend time learning from their experience and their knowledge. Why Peter?s? Peter is an excellent photographer. Since I learned of his work a few years ago I have kept up with his website and his Facebook posts. If you don?t have a background on Peter look here: < http://www.peterturnley.com/bio.shtml> I thought I would benefit greatly from a workshop with him, 1) because of his skill and experience and, 2) because of Paris. I hadn?t been to Paris in awhile and wanted to go there and I gathered from his work that Peter had a special relationship with Paris: I thought that would be a perfect place to attend the workshop. Initially, I was unable to sign up as the class was full, but due to a last minute cancellation I was able to get in. I had also considered a Cuba workshop. First day. The 12 students all met at Peter?s apartment in the Marais...a centuries old building in the process of being remodeled. His flat was on the top (6th) floor. . A great view from a small balcony. We met on Sunday afternoon, introduced ourselves and listened to Peter speak. He talked and showed photos and discussed technique. After that we went out to photograph a dance festival on the Seine. Technique. Peter is not a technical photographer. He knows technique inside and out and thinks that you should learn technique and then shoot so much that you don?t need to think about it, a lot like learning to perform music. He currently shoots with an M9 and a 35 1.4. He recently starting using a Monochrome M. For his journalism work he also uses Nikon equipment. He always carried a camera and was always looking intently for images to make. He is a very prolific photographer. The basic premise of the workshop was ?learn to tell a story with street photography?. For the workshop he wanted us to: Use one lens, a wide angle in the 21 to 35mm range. If you only had zoom lenses, he had tape for you to tape it into one focal length. This would teach you what your lens was going to take in to help you learn to anticipate what was going to happen...if you saw it happen before you took the photo, you missed the photo. Take you camera off autoexposure; set your camera for where your are. Leave your lens hood and lens cap at your hotel...don?t waste time taking a lens cap off. I disagreed somewhat on the lens hood rule. His thinking is that a lens with a lens hood draws attention to the camera and makes it more intimidating. He feels that most lenses are of sufficient quality that they don?t really need lens hoods for street work. Try to shoot at 1/125 or faster. There is a big difference between 1/60 and 1/25. Hadn?t realized how much. Choose between color and black and white and shoot that all week...the workshop was on street photography, not on post production of street photography. Don?t crop...2 reasons, if you frame your shot better you won?t need to crop and 2) he wanted to see loosely edited un-cropped images to help him help you be a better editor of your own work. Always have your camera ready to shoot. Anticipate what will happen. If you see something happening, stay with it. Don?t shoot a few frames and leave. Stay with it and see what happens and keep shooting. Don?t be afraid to shoot photos. Don?t try to be sneaky, be open and friendly. He encouraged us to shoot horizontal, the thinking being that you can tell more of a story in a horizontal space. Vertical photos tend to focus on one thing, with a horizontal you have more space to tell a story, more context, things going into and out of the frame. Software: Peter edits in Photo Mechanic and converts to BW in photoshop and re-edits in Photo Mechanic. Very simple. Schedule: We would meet each day at Peter?s flat and hand in a flash drive with 50 images from the previous day?s shooting. That?s a lot of images to shoot. Some folks struggled with it at first but eventually everyone became more prolific. Peter would do a rough edit of your images and then a second passthrough of your images. There was casual discussion of the photography...There wasn?t a lot of micro-discussion of the images, as the week passed we all became better at quickly determining what images really worked, what images didn?t work at all and what images needed to be looked at a second time. When you don?t shoot much you become attached to your ?didn?t really work? images, shooting more gets you past that block. After the editing session, there would be something else; one day we reviewed prints of his retrospective that was being hung 2 days after the workshop was over. On another day, the French photographer Gerard Uferas came to show his work. <http://www.gerarduferas.com/gerard_uferas.php?lang=en> On another day we were treated to an visit by the black and white printer Voja Mitrovic < http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2010/08/voya-mitrovic-part-i.html > Voja brought with him a stack of before and after prints of work by Peter, Salgado and many other photographers who he has printed for; this was one of those afternoons I will never forget. Voja has printed the Cartier-Bresson Puddle Jumper image for years, and yes, it is cropped. For the past 30 years he has been printing it from a 4x5 copy negative. There was also discussion of what the next stage of silver printing would be and how to incorporate digital images into that workflow. Duggal in NYC has been having some success on printing onto sliver paper from digital files. We had a couple of group dinners w/Peter at the Brasserie de l'Isle Saint-Louis, which I immediately recognized as the location of some well known photos. <http://www.peterturnley.com/images/prints/02.jpg> On Friday the group edit session was focused at editing 15 images from each person?s work for the week and sequencing them into an online show. On Saturday morning, we viewed the final ?show? , looked at some more photos and talked about photography. It was a nice end to a really exhausting week. Here's some photos: http://leowesson.com/workshop/index.html Leo Wesson Photographer/Videographer 817.733.9157 www.leowesson.com _______________________________________________ Leica Users Group. See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information