Captured #04: April 2024

Welcome to the fourth, and possibly final, edition of Captured. The jury is out as to whether I continue because I feel like I’m running out of interesting things to talk about 😆 I might revert to using my blog and post stuff on there sporadically, as the mood takes me, rather than try and write on a contrived schedule. Dunno, we’ll see!

A Photography Workshop in London

I spent a day in London this month with the fantastic Mark Fearnley on one of his workshops. I’d never been on a workshop before and I really enjoyed it, which is fortunate as I’m booked on another one with Paul Reid in May!

Mark classes himself as a ‘fine art street photographer’ which I can relate to as it’s how I think about what I’m trying to do a lot of the time with my photography, although Mark is a trained artist so he can get away with it, whereas it just sounds pretentious coming from a untrained dork like me.

Mark’s workshop very much takes an art-first approach. It focuses on finding unique locations (lots of grimy underpasses!), different viewpoints, thinking about composition the light. Much of this is about getting your camera low, really low. Or really high. Just not in the usual place that everyone defaults to. He couldn’t care less about cameras and gear, and uses his iPhone much of the time. Refreshing!

I took a lot of photos during the day, most of which were absolutely terrible as I experimented and practiced different things. I did come away with a handful that I was pleased with though, all very much in Mark’s style of course, but it’s a style I absolutely love anyway. Many of them feature Mark himself in his signature hat, if you were wondering.

I’d highly recommend the workshop if you’re in London with a day to spare.

In the Studio

I joined the Edinburgh Photographic Society last year and I’ve been doing the induction so I can use their fantastic studio. Studio work is very different to street photography, so it’s refreshing to learn about the different skills and techniques you need. It’s definitely something I’d like to do more of.

Here are a couple of images I took the other week (thanks to Portia and Laura for modelling).

Photos from April 2024

Here are a selection of other photos I took during April. As ever, plenty more on the ‘gram 😊📷

Reading matter

I read a couple of photography books this month.

Saul Leiter - Early Color

I’m somewhat obsessed with Saul Leiter and this is probably the best book I’ve seen of his work. Everything about the photos are right up my, er, street. The framing, the negative space, the colour. Amazing.

Bystander – A History of Street Photography

Viewing gallery

Some YouTube videos I’ve enjoyed this month.

• The Photography of Alex Munroz is a walkie-talkie with Roman Fox in Japan. Alex takes street portraits on medium format film and I found watching Alex’s approach really engaging. It also really made me want to fully embrace my inner hipster and buy a TLR 120mm film camera 😅
• How to clean your Fujifilm X-T5 camera sensor was a life saver after I somehow got stuff stuck on my sensor a week after buying the camera. It was actually pretty straightforward to clean in the end!
• Flash photography basics for Fujifilm. This 3-part series by the excellent pal2tech was so useful to go through prior to visiting the studio. I knew literally nothing about flash, and now I feel pretty comfortable with it all. I’d highly recommend watching this if you want to learn about this side of things.
• Bringing In $26.5 Million A Year From Our Photography Startup. This is more about tech than photography to be honest, but I’d never heard of the Tezza app before and found the story fascinating. There are some excellent filters on the Tezza app but most are behind the $26.5m paywall.

Listen Up

Marika Hackman’s Morning After Mix

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Ok, that’s a wrap!

See you next month. Or maybe not! 😆👋📷