I recently attended a workshop run by the very excellent @fotofilmic on the equally excellent Bowen Island, off the shore of Vancouver. If there is a more suitable place to lose yourself in a three day creative binge, I’ve yet to find it. The weather certainly helped. I had been worried that there would be a tension between wanting to head off with my camera to explore the island versus remaining indoors with the tutors. As it transpired it rained solidly for the three days of the workshop making that point moot, but even if it hadn’t, I would not have felt conflicted. The tutoring was excellent.

The workshop was run over three days by three very different tutors. To get such high quality insight into your work from very different perspectives is rare and while the course was certainly not cheap, it was worth every cent. My initial motivation to attend was that one of the tutors was none other than @renaldiphotos, a photographer I’ve admired since I saw one of his touching (pun intended) portraits from the Touching Strangers project in ‘Read this if You Want to Take Great Pictures of People’. That was four years ago and was one of the motivations for me to start making my own portraits of strangers. It legitimized the idea that photographing strangers in a short moment was an authentic approach to portraiture.

Carolyn Drake – @drakeycake – and Lucy Conticello – @lucyconticello – rounded off the other two tutors. I confess I was not familiar with either of their work prior to the workshop (Lucy is a photo editor rather than a photographer though her referencing this throughout the workshop did leave me wanting to ask whether she didn’t also take photographs and therefore might not also be reasonably considered a photographer), but feel blessed for having discovered them both. Carolyn’s work in particular is quite special and offers a perspective so very different to my own (and Richard’s) that it enriched the overall learning process far beyond what I had anticipated.

In the plethora of ‘a-ha’ moments through the three days, the most insightful was the clear indication that I am not done with this photographing men without their shirts on project. Although I had instinctively felt this prior to the workshop, when the weather made a distinct and unambiguous left turn at the start of September, I felt that the opportunity to execute on a consistent theme was slipping away. As the flowers started to die off and the cooler air temperatures made it more difficult to persuade my subjects to disrobe, I reasoned that the project had to come to an end and I should move on to something else even though in my stomach I didn’t feel I had properly explored the subject.

All three tutors encouraged me to continue exploring the themes so far developed and to use the changing of the seasons as a central locating idea to do that. Richard in particular pointed out that the changing colours in the landscape can be quite beautiful and Carolyn strongly suggested that I explore other body types, perhaps even my own (more on that in a subsequent post). Lucy explained the need to introduce more variety of composition and subject and so the work continues.

This frame is the result of that work. I’ve switched locations now, opting instead of the rusty colours of the October forest. I used to spend a lot of time up on the Surrey Hills riding my mountain bike but I haven’t been up there much in the last few years and it’s nice to be back. The challenges of finding willing subjects has indeed increased though the air temperature is just high enough to make it viable but still I struggled to get willing volunteers.

Ironically, Denise and Marcello were the first people I asked. The encounter was very rewarding and they both seemed very willing to engage and indulge me, though I am not as sure about the composition. The setting is really very different to what I have shot so far and the shift in location does feel like an abrupt and tangential change. Even if the subject matter is broadly the same, the shift in backdrop and composition (I am trying to discipline myself to shoot portraits in 5x4 landscape rather than always relying on 4x5 portrait), results in a radical shift in the feel of the image. I like it but only time will tell if the results are complimentary to the project.

Jacob was an equally rewarding but very different encounter. This was the other end of the day to Marcello and Denise, and the last person I asked. After failing to persuade anyone else the whole day to work with me, I had made my way back to the car park as the light faded. As I approached I could see a group of about six people getting into cars ready to leave. I could see their ages and sensed that this group would most likely be more receptive and so I literally ran over to try and engage them before they left. Jacob was easily the most obvious candidate; his head band and long hair (he told me people keep asking him if he’s Jesus Christ), so very distinctive and individual. It transpired that the group were all siblings, two brothers and a sister, all of whom live in the local village and all of whom were with their respective partners. This certainly helped as the siblings cajoled Jacob into taking part but the really lovely part was that it subsequently turned into an impromptu family photo shoot.

I do like the resulting frame of Jacob; the colour palette was precisely what I had in mind and the light is soft. Ironically I should have used the ladder that Lucy Conticello suggested I employ. I had previously thought about this, even had a set in my car at one point, while shooting over the summer. I’d noticed that to get the angle right for the subject to be in the frame with the flowers without obscuring them I needed to be a little higher. It’s funny how your instincts can subsequently receive serendipitous validation. In this instance, I think the composition does need the additional height, even if it’s not needed for practical reasons in this frame (because there are no flowers as such), I think the elevation of perspective is key to maintaining the sense of vulnerability in the subject that the project is built around.