This is our student photographers’ gallery, showcasing emerging photographers, absolute beginners, hobbyists and serious amateurs. It’s a snapshot selection of the many participants who have attended an Essaouira workshop over the years.
This is our student photographers’ gallery, showcasing emerging photographers, absolute beginners, hobbyists and serious amateurs. It’s a snapshot selection of the many participants who have attended an Essaouira workshop over the years. Not only as a tool to show you what’s possible on location, but it’s also an opportunity to pay homage to the range of talents that have passed through.
In putting it together I’ve revisited the photos I would have helped to originally sequence. To see these again has been a pleasure such is the variety of imagery. Here’s my brief take on the 15 selected for Creative Camera.
Brian is a contributor to this site and an accomplished photographer. He has been out to Morocco a number of times. An RPS recipient, he’s comfortable with a host of different subjects and genres but in this gallery, he shows the importance of moving his feet to get into the right position for an effective composition.
Shauneen is confident with her camera and her images reflect this. She uses her telephoto lens intelligently, introducing foreground objects to edge the frame with interest, giving a 3D effect whilst correctly placing the focus points.
Clare skillfully uses red as a motif and not blue which would be the obvious choice for many coming to Essaouira. By selecting red, as the smaller detail in the frame, blue coloured objects jostle for prominence, creating dynamic images.
Shimona’s gallery shows a flattened perspective in looking at surfaces. Her last in the set was incorporated into the main page site. A striking image that shows the power of getting close to the right subjects and using a tilted angle.
Anna’s series of square images probably contains one of the all-time great, country market photos; a donkey looking at his owner’s cash haul for that morning. The square aspect ratio can work very well with tightly cropped subjects.
Lin was already an accomplished photographer before the course. She shows confidence here shooting many subjects, realising each with a different approach. Lin is now progressing through the RPS system.
With a background in camera club competitions, Alison is really assured compositionally, equally great with people in the market, and with architecture. Here, she offers examples of how to simplify scenes.
Ann is an artist by training, and reviewing her photos for the first time gave me an insight into the consistency of framing. Every image has a compositional purpose and form to it. Her ratio of ‘keepers’ to files shot is also very high with very little wastage.
Outside Essaouira’s medina, Dan finds his eye drawn to architectural subjects. Using a telephoto lens impressively, he carefully composes to find consistency across the set. His background in graphic design is evident here.
Melanie has a sophisticated compositional approach. You can see that in her photo of garden greenery above an old door, and in her final image using spice bags to frame a forlorn-looking woman at the market.
Tina takes a more abstract look at a variety of subjects, finding just the right composition in each case. Working with subjects which don’t have a strong visual pull means having to work a bit more with framing. Her blue wall image showing compression of space is often used for teaching.
Jurgens’ gallery is from a three-hour walkabout, with the aim to find colour and light. Reacting quickly to opportunities, he wasn’t shy about getting close to subjects using his wide-angle. I like how he spotted the fallen orange and used it as a framing point.
Nick has a real feel for people photography. He finds the right compositions by getting in close and down, using a wide close angle, and also tilting up. All of these are characteristic of top reportage photography.
Himal with the only black and white photographers’ gallery here, shows the artistic possibilities of using monochrome to isolate simple intimate scenes and draw out graphical lines and shapes.
Wotek emerged from his week’s course as a full-on street photographer, using a variety of compositional approaches to different subjects. Essaouira was his inspiration and he used his time here to really develop his photography.
