Street Portrait Workshop - Developing Your Artistic Vision

A hands on workshop aimed at giving you tools to understand your artistic vision and to put it into practice.

Having access to the streets of London is as good as having a photography studio on your doorstep. If you love taking photos of people or want to improve your skills there are few better places in the world to do it. Finding the people you want to shoot is a great way to hone and develop your artistic vision. It has helped me to understand myself more as a photographer and why I make the choices I do and what stories I want to tell. Every photo I take teaches me something and taking street portraits is a great way to accelerate your learning.

What scares you about stopping someone in the street whose portrait you would like to make? For me it is my fear of rejection or bugging someone. I can play out a whole story in my head as to why it would be a bad idea, and then the opportunity has gone, which is why I always try to keep this quote from street photographer Joel Meyerowitz etched in my mind when I’m out shooting:

‘…Have no doubts. As a conscious, thinking person, trust your passions and feelings. Don’t hesitate, because in photography hesitation is loss, and every picture you lose is like a wound…Have the confidence to try anything.’

In the three hours we have together I will coach you on how to stop and speak to strangers. I will help you to get past your fears of approaching strangers and to think about your creative vision and to work towards creating your own body of work.

For me making street portraits is about more than just pointing my camera at a random stranger and getting a cool photo. It is about combining my artistic vision and personality through the interaction I have with another person… and learning how to apply my skills in a very limited amount of time.

It may sound scary but it is a lot of fun, incredibly rewarding and a great way to meet people too! And I will support you throughout the workshop to work past your fears and worries and to see this as a practice in itself.

We will meet in Shoreditch in London's East End and work our way through the streets, stopping people and asking them to take their portrait. There will be a mix of stopping people as we go along and working with different backgrounds. The route will help to bring everything to a point where we bring all of the elements that we have looked at together.

There will be time to work with me, individually and in pairs. I have worked with photographers of all levels, so all are welcome. There will be some instruction on techniques and a lot of exploring of some of the less touristic places in London.

Encouragement and inspiration from other photographers has been what has helped me to move forward most in my photography and I love being able to help other photographers to develop their practice and to see the work that gets produced on my workshops.

The workshop is open to up to 6 people at a time and I will cover a range of things that will help you to gain confidence with you street portraiture, from camera settings and angles, to how to pick a subject and background.

I will give you coaching on how to approach people on the street and take photos under pressure with limited time. I encourage all participants to work with a theme that they would like to develop and that they can continue working with beyond this workshop. I am also available for online accountability sessions following the workshop, to support you to keep growing and build your portfolio.

If you aren’t a photographer but this interests you then you are more than welcome to join, in fact it would be a great place to start your photography journey. Because it is such a practical workshop, participants of all levels will be able to learn something that will push them forward and help them to develop as a photographer and artist.

The workshop will run whatever the weather - as the old saying goes ‘bad weather, good photos’, so please be prepared for whatever might come our way!

Contact me here for more information