Photography Course and Five Lessons

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters

We were all there a few months ago.  Back when we thought this Covid-19 threat would lock us up for about a month or so and then life would continue on.  We all thought about the opportunity this would give us to learn something new, or to tackle something that we have been wanting to for some time.  Many of us failed miserably, demanding things of ourselves while we were in the middle of a global pandemic might have been a bit ambitious....

Well I signed up for a photography class on story telling through photography. The principal behind the class was to reduce the dependence on a single image to carry the entire story, and allow the story to unfold through a series of photographs. The class was on-line, and held each Friday night. I was able to get my work done then join the class, or if I missed it, it would be recorded and I could catch up later. 

Lesson 1:
The first project was to shoot 18-24 images of a typical day for us in quarantine. I decided to use my iPhone for this one, as the idea was to capture your daily routine from beginning to end. The iPhone is always with me, and lets be honest, the camera it comes with these days is really amazing. 

But the lesson behind the project was to show us that 18-24 images is SO MANY PICTURES! You would think that in a digital age, it would be easy to snap 18-24 images of your day, but consider that the images would be seen by the entire class, so the message had to be clear, the subject obvious and the composition pleasing. 

With some careful thought and planning, you can tell an intricate story with five or six images. Any real work, beyond this is really an intricate project. 

Lesson 2:
The second lesson was to study some great documentary photographers, starting with the Farm Security Administration. I knew of their work especially that of Dorothea Lange and saw many of their images before but then we were introduced to Jacob Riis work, and I had never seen it before. Photographs of the New York slums really reached out beyond their dusty history and really hit home. 

We were introduced then to Bernd & Hilla Becher, as a way to balance out documentary photographer created to drive social change (as in the FSA and Riis) and move towards a documentary project for the sake of art. This is a German Couple that went around Europe and the US for decades shooting pictures of industrial plants. The created an amazing collection of beautiful images of massive plants and water tanks.

We then went on to see the work of Diego Levy, a photojournalist who created a project around B&W images of scenes where damage has occurred, often with blood. His wide angle, close up shots with flash are reminiscent of Weegee.  

The real lesson here is that different photographers can approach a story from different angles but if a body of work is going to continue dozens of images it requires significant dedication.  The photographers listed above all tackled long term projects and created art but it required time and sacrifice. 

Lesson 3:
We then moved on to Larry Sultan, another long term project but this time in amazing color. This was a radical departure to what we had seen before.  Here he is shooting the retirement of his parents and their life in a very colorful, plastic world. The other documentary images were all in B&W and this one really hit us with its use of color. 

A documentary does not have to fit into a stereotype. It can reach out and grab the viewer and shake them up. This is not necessary, but if wielded correctly, a camera can impact not just through the message (such as FSA) but also through the medium. 

Lesson 4:
We went back over the photographers and we were asked to start listing single words that described them. We began to focus our attention on details and quickly began to notice patterns. These patterns of the images are what collectively make up the photographer's chosen style. The wonderful lesson is that your style can change from one project to the next, but within the project ideally it should stay similar. There must be something beyond subject matter that pulls the images together. If not, you wind up with a group of images that more closely resembles a collage.  

​Lesson 5:
This one is an amazing insight. After studying all the great work, and the sacrifice made by the great photographers we looked at, we were introduced to dozens of contemporary photographers building stories through images using Instagram. The lesson here is that a documentary story can be as simple as a single roll of film loaded into a camera for a trip to the zoo. The only thing it must have is a clear binding element. This can be a timeline, as in taking. a picture just as you are leaving your house, and a final image just as you return. But whatever you choose to do, either a massive project, or a simple story, photography can be a powerful tool used in different ways to transmit a story.

Consider, as a little project, to capture a few images of your kids playing. From when the start to pick out the toys, to the end when the run out of the room leaving the toys on the floor (all kids do it). This can be a simple ten minute project shot on your iPhone.  Or you can decide to shoot it from the toy's vantage point, requiring more complex angles. Or you can take it from your Childs. This can be a simple series or a complicated project requiring days of planning and coordination.