Live and breathe photography on these assignment led photography immersion workshops
Creative Camera’s photography immersion workshops are a one-off annual event to a new location each year. Initially you will draw up your own assignment before arriving on location and to adapt as necessary. It can be in the style and approach of your choosing, there’s no genre specificity. Target countries will be the less photographically visited which offer a different iconography to catch our interest and eye. Examples include: Slovenia, Estonia, Galicia, Bosnia and Romania. The way you interpret these places is entirely individual. It’s not a documentary tour, you can approach subjects in a much more abstract and eclectic way.
They differ from the core experience workshops with the emphasis instead on both instructors and participants photographing the places for the first time visit. These are not, I’ll show the spot to get a great photo, but rather, this location is photographically exciting. Evening screenings of images will provide invaluable feedback on the development of your assignment. Overall it’s about a journey of discovery for everyone. The learning for participants is not only through sharing images for evaluation amongst the group, but also through seeing the instructors’ images and getting an insight into their way of working. Overall, there’s a fresh approach in these immersion workshops.
To help foster a shared experience and for the optimal exchange of ideas, everyone stays in the same villa or complex accommodation. A 24/7 approach to project and portfolio building, it’s the closest thing to being a student one again. We’ll take public transport where possible, as it’s about being embedded and getting under the skin of the place. Trains and buses slow the pace down somewhat and allow some reflective time. They’re also great hubs for photographic interest.
The emphasis is on the less visited locations that, in varying degrees, offer rich material both in urban settings for social documentary or in semi-rural communities for a more pastoral interpretation. Each year there will be a rotation in selecting regions offering urban landscapes, natural landscapes and city destinations.
How does it work in practice?
The immersion workshops are facilitated via a local contact, a fixer, developed through the Creative Camera Forum hosting interface or through our own network of recommendations. They will provide a pre-trip pack with essential information. From this and individual searches, you will formulate an idea of what your intentions could be for the location, where you should direct your observations and the kind of photography you wish to make. Based on these you will draft your assignment brief. The trip may include two locations within a country.
There will be a maximum of six photographers plus two instructors, with the evenings set aside for reviews and editing with some image critiquing. Workshop participants should have an excellent command of their camera and most likely would have attended at least one of our core experience workshops on the site.
In 2023, our first chosen country is Romania. In two distinct halves, Romania offers social context, engaging landscapes, colourful town backdrops in the north, as well as agricultural communities on its border. This first immersion trip will be led by Darren Lewey and Brian Law.
In the 1990’s I made two documentaries in Romania, one of which was commissioned by C4. Brian has visited a number of countries in the past 5 years including; Uzbekistan, Ukraine, India and Albania and is adept at photographically navigating new locations quickly. On location, it’s likely that we’ll photograph in two’s or three’s.
Register your interest to receive a pack on Romania.
