Last month, I participated in a Creative Photography 2-part workshop led by professional photographer Ellie Ramsden and facilitated by the Blueprint Collective. Ellie has worked alongside Adidas and Nike (if you don't already know, I love everything Nike project), and she is known for documenting London's music scene. I'd recommend checking out her work if you're into music and street photography because it's super cool. The Blueprint Collective are a collective of over 100 young people from Brent, who have curated free online workshops for 18-25 year olds, encompassing much of the creative spectrum from vlogging, to podcasting, fashion, comic writing, film making... anything young people are interested in. I've always loved photography. As these things tend to happen, I came across this workshop and thought whoa, this encapsulates a lot of what I'm interested in.
Ellie gave valuable insight into her personal journey with photography, as well as providing lots of resources to help with the admin side of freelancing (very helpful because I'm terrible at this) and also, different organisations and agencies. I think what a lot of workshops and courses lack is actionable advice. Maybe its because I'm generation snowflake, although I personally see it as efficiency, but tell me where to go and who to talk to. So shoutout to Ellie for being solid with direction. At the end of the first part of the workshop, she set a challenge to create a shot that shows personality, and gave us a weekend to work on it.
Firstly, I stressed because no one in my family wanted to be a subject, which meant by default, I had to be the subject and trust someone else to take a decent picture. Secondly, I stressed again because no one in my family was willing to put aside time to help me take the picture I was envisioning. Finally, I put on my project management hat, optimised my resources and created this.
No that's not a raw image, that kind of sky doesn't exist in the UK, but a brilliant sky is what I needed to tell that kid's story. To recreate the vision I saw in my head that went beyond what was physically possible with a camera in my current settings, I looked to photo manipulation. As much as I'm not a computer person (I prefer the adrenaline of physically doing things that get my blood pumping), this was my gateway to a more magical realm, so I sat down, learnt some basic editing on GIMP (free software for anyone who like me, doesn't have Photoshop funds) and brought the vision to life.
Getting the initial shot was also an adventure in itself. I had an iPhone 6 to work with, yes an iPhone 6 in 2020. I took my 8+ snorkelling in Thailand back in February and long story short, it died. I drafted in a friend to help, the only person I trusted to make executive creative decisions based on what we were trying to achieve, and we were working against time (it was 8pm and I didn't want a dark shot).
The first road we tried wasn't wide enough. We then drove around a little to scout a new location, and proceeded to take multiple shots while simultaneously keeping an eye on any cars trying to get by and feeling a little self conscious about the bystanders . Having said that though, much love to the Harlesden community who watched two kids do their photo thing for 10 minutes, encouraged us from the sidewalk, and were more concerned about us accidentally tripping and getting hurt.
All in all, I had loads of fun putting this together. It gave me an opportunity to try something new with the editing aspect of it. It solidified (once again) that my family are far too traditional to take creative ventures seriously. I concluded for the millionth time, that I just have to trust and back myself.
I was super glad that Ellie's interpretation of the image matched what I wanted to convey. I'm now looking for my next challenge :)
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