[Leica] Turnley Workshop

[leowesson at gmail.com (leo wesson)]

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