Workshop Experience : Photography Studies College Week #1
As I have some spare time at the moment I have enrolled in a part time Creative Camera and Capture workshop at the Photography Studies College PSC Melbourne, Victoria AUSTRALIA.
The workshop is made up of 20 3 hour sessions on a weeknight plus a weekend location activity. There were no prerequisites (except the fee of around $2500 AUD or so) and its made up of 3 units from their actual Advanced Diploma in Photography course that they offer.
I thought I would use these pages to share some of the experiences as we go along and hopefully get some conversations going on the content and learnings and how it can help us all achieve our own goals in photography.
Guitar Man @LesWillPhoto 2015 Leica M6 TTL, Tri-X 400TX film, f11, 1/500, scan via Vuescan
Session 1
PSC is a very well respected institution in Melbourne and Australia so I start this course with a pretty high sense of excitement and expectation. First day is always a bit slow and clunky. We all met each other - about 18 of us - and our lecturer who is Scott McNaughton, photographer for Fairfax. Described himself as a mixture of technical photographer and creative photographer - so should cater for every type in the class ! Really solid guy that came across well from the get go. Outlined what we will go through over the next 20 weeks, and gave us an insight in to the fact that we are all starting from different points, and the course is all about lifting each of us from wherever we see ourselves at the moment. Sounds good. Also warned us that during the workshop our shots will get worse before they get better of course!
After sharing some of his own work and discussing his work (probably a bit more then he expected!) Scott took us through a quick history of photography, Covering work from Capa, H CB and the early Magnum people, he then moved on to the early photo journalism work of Annie Leibovitz. It was then whirlwind review of the work from James Nachtwey, Joe McNally, Elliot Erwitt and Greg Marinovich and the Bang Bang Club. Clearly a lot of content from a lot of photographers and all well worth exploring and reading up on. McNally's work is fantastic in my view, and the early Magnum greats are all inspirational given their focus on the creative capture of moments as opposed to the technology - as it wasn't around much then of course! Really enjoyed the albeit quick timeline run through from the first known photo (daguerreotype) to modern day photographs.
I like the fact that the workshop is all about lifting and bettering each of us from our own starting point, and as with any workshop, its more about what we want to get out of it as opposed to anything else. All good so far.
The PSC journey has started! Until next time.