Leica Workshop
On the Friday before last, I went on a Leica workshop. This one wasn’t like the other ones from this year. This one was about portraiture. So I was really being taken out of my comfort zone. This was led by portrait, editorial & advertising photography Cat Garcia.
On this workshop, we had a 25 minute shoot with an actor called Luke Ward-Wilkinson who has appeared in Wild At Heart. This instantly gave me a device to build up a rapport with him. I could also further build the rapport by mentioning about my cousin who’s trying to make it as an actor in New York.
Before the shoot however, we we’re asked to show ten images of our work. I said in my opinion it was tough to pick because sports photography can be very repetitive. When looking at both my sports and my events work, Cat felt that with my portraits I should try to evoke emotion from Luke. To which Julian said he’s good at if you let him know what you want yo create.
Next Cat spoke to us about her style of work. She feels that all of her work, whether it’s commissioned or personal is a collaboration. A portrait is a joint effort. Cat is a massive fan of natural light. The image on the left is one of my favourite. Her work also requires loads of preparation. Cat said she’d been waiting for the light and shadow to be in the perfect location to match the position of the face. This image wouldn’t of been the same if it was shot with flash.
So now onto the shoot itself. I decided to shoot with the Leica SL system with the 24-90 f2.8/4. I was the first up and if I had more time to practice. I probably would’ve taken a chance with the Leica M rangefinder. However I only had 20 minutes to practice. I’m really happy with the shots that I came out with.
I decided to go with a mixture of natural and staged images. Feedback of the set was good as well. My peers really liked the colours and poses that I created with Luke. My only regret from the shoot is that all the shots we’re taken in shade so there isn’t as much light in the eyes of Luke that I expected.
The Leica workshop was a great way to end a fun 1st Year at Ravensbourne.
I was a bit downhearted about my social media appeal to find taxi drivers. My appeal on my Facebook didn’t get any responses and neither did my Instagram appeal. Even though I feel the social media attempt was a bit of a disaster it was the next phase where I messaged my friends actually led to my first taxi driver that let me shoot and test my shots.
I feel that I came up with some very strong ideas. There we’re some standout ideas like the Bus Routes, Billingsgate Market, Camden and Embassies. However ultimately the strongest idea was the the recreation of the First World War.
I’m very happy with my choice in story line as well. As passionate as I was about this project. The hardest thing was choosing an event. WW1 has loads of well known battles, Tannenburg, Gallipoli, Verdun, Somme, Passchendaele, Caporetto, Arras, Kaiserschlacht, Vittorio Venato, Argonne Forest however they storylines would essentially be the same. Attackers advance, defenders retreat/fight back. So I want to go for a narrower story, one idea I did have the famous Lost Battalion which was a famous few days in the Argonne Offensive. This however would’ve been too tough to show through photography.
I settled on the Christmas truce, this was a great choice because there was hundreds of battles but there was only one truce. It’s something which is unique and completely unexpected from war.
I’m happy with the design phase of my book. I’m glad that I decided to hand-draw a trench illustration to put onto my book. I went through several avenues of experimentation to implement this into my book. I was initially going to have it on every page but my peers felt they detracted from the images, which I was suspicious of and my friends seeing it all but confirmed it. I’m happy with how I portrayed it on my introduction and ending pages. The trenches is the starting point, where the soldiers we’re safe. The writing is in ‘no mans land’ where it was felt they we’re vulnerable. But no mans land in where the soldiers met for the truce.
In this project I learnt about the importance of type. I came into this project thinking that big wide fonts were the best for titles. However it’s actually much smaller font sizes that stand out more. We have to remember that the best way our eyes read is in small sections. Thats why newspaper type is so small. My type, like the trenches. Went through several avenues of experimentation before I reached the final product.
This project was not fully an exercise into how to take photos. This is was more of an exercise in how to arrange photo to tell a narrative. For this project I did loads of edits on tables.
My book arrived on Tuesday the 5th of June. When I opened the package there was instantly a problem. My book had been sent to me however the pages had been binded to a front cover for an Automative photographer called 
I’ve just received my photo-book from Mixam and I am absolutely GUTTED!!!
Apart from that I’m very impressed with the book. I really like the images especially the double page spreads. Espeically the one where the soldiers are shaking hands, there hands meet in the bind, which I intended.
Below is the final layout of my photo-story A World Beyond The War. I’ve ordered the book from Mixam. In A4 with 130 gsm silk paper.
The shoot went alright. I must admit we did have technical difficulties. It was very overcast, a storm was on the way so the sky was very dark. This meant there wasn’t very much ambient light in the centre. Apart from the taxi lights and a few fluorescent tubes at the petrol pumps. This wasn’t helped by us have a faulty flash kit. We didn’t know this during the shoot, but it seems that the flash seems to be out-of-sync after it’s been fired 4 or 5 times. It sounds to stupid to be true but below is a video of me and Molly testing it out. The power was on 4.0 and the image was black. It was’t the camera settings because the image only picked up the ambient light.
Mentioning back to the technical problems. It meant that I was gutted because I felt it would’ve been very good to include an image of a female taxi driver. However the flash didn’t fire in sync with the exposure. So sadly I can’t use it with the project.
Thursday was the day for my latest tutorial for Location Photography. Celine started the by showing us a catalogue of books that MACK did. It was shown to make a point, which Celine said wasn’t valid for my idea because my book works with it. However Celine was showing us that not many photo-books are made in Landscape. In the Mack Publisher catalogue there was only one landscape book. Landscape is a very tough format to use, not only does it squash portrait images it’s very tough to use a Double page spread effectively thanks to it being turned into a panorama. This is something that was perfect for my photos but for other photos it isn’t good.
So we started by looking at my updated photo-book layout. Celine liked the improvements I made to the trenches. There now grey rather than a harsh black and there only on the end paper where the intro and outro are. This way the images can talk for themselves. Celine believed that I need to pay more attention to type. My intro and outro originally had lines that stretched across the entire page. After some thought I’ve decided to change this to a 1/3 of the page. It’s just too tough to read a line that goes across an entire width of a page, especially for an A4 landscape book. Celine also said that I’ve clearly realised that smaller type is better than bigger type. Case in point the front cover. I had the name A World Beyond The War stretching across the cover. Now I’ve changed it to Font size 12 and it is now much easier to read and take in.
Ben Peters Digital Photography 