Karoline's Work and Words About Working With Me in Norway

My lovely Norwegian clients were teenage sisters.  Their eye for composition and their ability to understand what I was showing them about photography, impressed me. 

They wrote of working with me and made me adore them even more :-)

Working with Di has been incredibly fun! At first, I thought it was going to be challenging learning everything in English, but it was surprisingly easy.

She is a really great teacher, and a really great person. I will definitely start taking a lot more pictures now that I know how to do it properly.

It has been an amazing experience that I will never forget!

Rebecca's Work and Words About Working With Me in Norway

You know us teens; we're bad at giving things a chance before deciding whether it's fun or boring, and I honestly thought it would be boring. But no, it was incredibly fun!

And not only was Di a good teacher, she is also one of those people who is easy to kind of connect with. And for me, that is very important. She taught us a lot more than just photography.

It was a great experience and I definitely have been inspired to photograph more.

A Little Bit of Me, Myself and I ... at work in Norway

I have finally had time to sit down and begin working on the photographs taken in Norway.

I was, once again, photographed while working with photographers ...  Ren Powell is responsible for two of the photographs in the montage below.  I couldn't resist taking the third.

I still need to get permission to post photographs of the lovely people I worked with while in Stavanger but ... I permitted myself to post these.

Photography Workshops for Women.

I am running a photography workshop in April however do let me know if you have a small group of friends or want to work with me one-on-one, and we can work out another date that suits you.

Sunday 6 April, 2014.

We will begin at 10am and work through until 5pm.

(Lunch, with non-alcoholic drinks, included in workshop fee.)

Cost: includes lunch, drinks, an A3 notebook, and a copy of my 38-page e-book, titled Photography Made Beautifully Simple.  Usually 65 euro.

I'll send you instructions on how to reach the venue beforehand.

Note: there are just 4 places, allowing for different cameras and giving me the time to work with each person.

The details: I'm launching a series of one-day photography workshops for women who want to take better photographs for their business blogs and/or personal blogs.

Women who don't have the flash camera or time to learn all there is to learn about photography.  Women who do have the flash camera and want to know how to use it.

Together, small groups of us, will spend a few hours out in the city and park here in Antwerp, then head back to work on editing our images.

These will be an ongoing series of workshops.  If you don't get everything you wanted to know in that first workshop, then come back ... and we'll hang out together and have a good time while we work on the rest.

I will help you with basic things like light, camera shake, and how to photograph people.  We can work on how to tell the story of you, your family, or your business.

And how to create photographs you're happy to put out there in public.

I will also introduce you to a very basic but effective editing programme.

Contact me if you are interested, want to book a place, have questions, or requests about topics you're struggling with.

You will receive a free copy of my photography e-book, Photography Made Beautifully Simple, when you sign-up to work with me.  It's a book that introduces you to your camera and its functions in small, easy-to-manage pieces and it would be superb if you are familiar with it before our workshop.

I'll be holding the workshops in Antwerp, in Belgium.  If you need info about trains, parking and etc, don't hesitate to ask for more information.

On Documentary Photography ...

Her photographic work is magnificent and I love her presence: her portraits are stunning, they expose intimacy, humor, and pensiveness; her photographs capture the space, the movement, human interaction deliciously, in a way that one feels invited to an event long after it disappeared from the public scene.

In all her unobtrusiveness when working with the camera, Di is great fun to hang out with, the artists, scholars, thinkers, curators of our Berlin exhibition highly appreciated her, and when working together in Cairo, Istanbul, Berlin, or wherever else, I enjoy her kindness, humor, and delightful presence.

Shulamit Bruckstein, Curator, director of TASWIR projects / ha’atelier

Shulamit wrote this after a series of projects together and, in so many ways, lays out what I want to achieve as a documentary photographer.

I believe I need to be unobtrusive, invisible ... disappearing into the moment I have been asked to capture.  At the same time I believe that there are going to be people I need to engage with.  It's about building trust, if there's time.  It's about being respectful - I want people to enjoy my work afterwards. 

I prefer to wear dark clothes and quiet shoes.  I carry cough drops and tissues.  Nothing about me should stand out or distract people from the event.  I don't make eye contact when I move around ... unless I need to or unless I find a 'favourite'.  A favourite is someone who embodies something of atmosphere ... the event.  And there is always someone.

I love my flash.  It's a Canon Speedlite 580EX II and over the years we've become good friends.  I know how to twist and turn it, to bounce light and avoid shadows.  I work with my favourite lens most of the time, a  Canon EF 70-200mm 1:4L.  Some people get hung up on the latest equipment but I simply love whatever works for me.  This lens is my baby.  Attached to my Canon 5D Mk II ... it's magic.

I prefer to zoom because it allows me to stand back, on the edges, while still getting up close and personal without people realising that it's all about them.

Documentary photography ... unobtrusiveness, respect, the building of trust, connections, communication.  It's all of that and more.  I love it.

Photographing People

I've been preparing for the photography workshop in Genova, thinking about all the things I know ... and finding stuff I didn't realise I knew.

When I make notes on portraiture, I include words like Trust and Respect.  Empathy.  Patience.  Engagement. Authenticity.

And it's not about acting or demanding or insisting.

People, when they're being photographed, are often fragile. They feel broken open, exposed, vulnerable.

You're asking them to show a little of their souls, to give you themselves in a relaxed state of being.

People often tell me they photograph badly but no, I think no one 'photographs badly'. I have this theory that it is a failure on the part of the photographer, to relax their client.  To engage.  To earn their trust.

When I work on a portrait shoot, I am almost skinless.  I don't want to be the boss, to be in control, to demand this expression, that pose, this place.

I want to go someplace my client loves.  A space where they can relax and feel comfortable.  I want to talk, and maybe walk a little.  I want to know who they are and how they want to be perceived.   I want to discover and capture their best selves.  The self they know and recognise. 

Sometimes, if it's a family portrait, I have asked the mum for a follow-up shoot alone because when you're a mum and a wife on a family shoot, you can miss out on being you.  Your own private individual you ... before you took on all those roles.

And it works.  I have photographed some beautiful strong confident women when they're off-duty as everything else.

Kids are something else again.  You need to engage, it needs to be fun, you need to be real.  They will know.  Bubbles have saved many a shoot when a child has grown bored or tired. 

Portraiture is all about a lot of things ... and then relaxing and enjoying that time spent together.  It's about gifting someone the beautiful things in them, and everyone has something. 

Your Beautiful Truth Retreat, Italy

Planning and developing has kept me quiet here, as well as playing tag with exhaustion and flu the rest of the time.

And so to announce, with much pleasure, the first Your Beautiful Truth Retreat, in partnership with the extremely talented and inspirational Diana Baur.

Come take a peek  ...