The Dark Lens: Review: Essential Street Portrait Crash Course, 12 February 2016

Yesterday, I attended the following 8-hour workshop, part of the annual Dubai Photo Week organized by Gulf Photo Plus.

I signed up for the class in December and am no longer clear why I did so. As so much of my photography the past three years came out of my OCA classes, perhaps the lack of a course had me looking for a bit of structure and focus. I think I was also interested in developing my street photography skills and saw this as chance to not only challenge myself, but also as an opportunity to meet fellow Dubai photographers with similar interests.

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Essential Street Portrait Crash Course
Eric Kim | Photography - Confident Beginner

Have you ran into an interesting stranger on the streets and had a burning desire to take their photo, but you were too scared to speak with that person? Do you want to build up that courage to engage with strangers more comfortably and without hesitation? Do you want to meet other street photographers that are as equally as passionate about street photography and portraiture just like you?

In this action packed day, you will learn the essentials of a great street portrait and how to engage and interact with strangers more comfortably.

The workshop is limited to a class of 16 passionate individuals who want to take their street portraiture to new heights. The crash course will be an intimate experience in which you will learn how to get more “yes” answers when approaching strangers for a photograph.

Workshop Syllabus
Here is a syllabus of what we will cover in the workshop:
1. How to conquer your fear of approaching people for street portraits
2. How to use fundamental street portrait techniques to take more engaging photos
3. How to react to people who get offended
4. How to choose the right people who are both interesting and more agreeable to having their photo taken
5. The best technical settings to use on your camera
6. How to capture more candid street portraits of people without disturbing the scene or eliciting reactions

https://gulfphotoplus.com/gpp/2016/workshops/311/Essential-Street-Portrait-Crash-Course

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First of all, Eric is a nice, personable young man. He obviously enjoys meeting people and sharing stories. I never felt he was condescending or dismissive. He seemed to enjoy what he was doing and spoke to everyone in the group as someone with something interesting to say and something to contribute. In that sense, he embodies the best qualities of a teacher.

The group consisted of 10 people, six men and four women, all 30+ and a few with money to spare. I was surprised to find several had travelled from abroad specifically for this week-long event, spending many hours in numerous workshops of various kinds, all but a handful of these costing upwards of US$300 each. The course I attended was $315.

The day began with Eric asking us to stand in a circle. Since we’ll be sitting for much of the day, he said, we could start standing. In truth, we spent most of the day walking. In any case, we took turns introducing ourselves, giving our names and trying to explain why we take photographs. Not a bad way to start the day, except ... One, Eric introduced a game element, mnemonic devices to help us remember names. We had to give an animal name starting with the same letter as our own, in addition to producing some kind of kinesthetic cue. So, for example, Eric was Elephant Eric and he waved his arm in front of his face like a trunk. As a teacher I can appreciate what he was trying to do. As someone paying for the class, I found it rather silly and not a welcome introduction to the day. Second, far too much time was spent talking about why we photograph. I appreciate this is an interesting topic. I’ve read many essays on the same. But I did not pay $300 to listen to this for more than an hour. Eric’s repeated interjections didn’t help. He’d riff on someone’s comment for five minutes, the original speaker would continue until he said something that set Eric off again. It wasn’t all useless or uninteresting, but was better left for an after-class get together in a cafe or bar.

By the time we finished with the opening, more than half the class had found places to sit or lean. Eric then asked us to get our cameras, and based on this he paired us off, for example two guys shooting film, my partner and I shooting compacts, and the others I’m sure how he paired. He then gave us an assignment: Role-play taking a portrait of your partner, who is to play a stranger on the street. The person on the street can play hard to get, and should on a second attempt play an angry stranger upset with such a request. Swap roles. The point here was to practice what we were going to be doing in the afternoon, approaching strangers on the street. The problem here was that there was zero instruction. At the very least Eric should have done a model role-play himself. He arrived in Dubai with a personal assistant, who also attended this course. They could have easily planned and even rehearsed a demonstration for the rest of us. At best, he might have produced film of himself in action on the street, showing us examples of how to do what he wants us to be able to do. This is what teachers do: they take a complex process, break it down into into small, analyzable routines, demonstrate, and help their students replicate the behavior.

My partner and I spent our time taking photos of each other, but we didn’t role play. I don’t know about her, but I didn’t feel like I had been prepared. I was with someone I had just met who seemed to feel equally uneasy about acting in front of a stranger. Eric never came to check on us, and so far as I could see he stood in the corner of the room and never watched any pairs up-close to offer direction or instruction.

He then had us huddle around the podium where he showed us some portraits he had taken and told stories about some of those encounters. Here some important tips were revealed, but not in any systematic way, only anecdotally, things like the differences in wide angle versus long lenses, what kind of things to say when approaching a stranger, how many images to take, camera settings and use of flash. His suggestion for setting ISO as high as 1600 for daylight highlighted his main point: he is less concerned about the technical quality of the image than he is in using the photographic experience as a means of personal encounter.

Afterwards we broke for lunch, then piled into a van and drove to the Bastakiya, one of the old neighborhoods of Dubai next the creek. There Eric gave us our assignment: 10 rejections. We had to practice asking for portraits, take those we could, and deal as best we could with rejections. Then he sent us off. I thought perhaps he might be modeling for us, demonstrating how to approach and shoot, but if he did I wasn’t there to see it. Nor was I there to see him offer feedback on how we approached our subjects.

My partner and I wandered off and took photos but kept running into classmates. It seemed we were all taking images of many of the same people and hunting as a pack. In one respect this was helpful. Photographers could feel secure in a group, and working together we could egg each other on to take risks we might not otherwise. Those who are competitive might have felt challenged to get more images than others. My feeling is that our classmates took more chances than if they had simply been dropped into the neighborhood by themselves without the small amount of instruction and encouragement provided in the classroom.

We wandered across the Bastakiya, took an abra across the creek, and walked through Deira to the Hyatt, where we once again piled into the van for the drive back to Knowledge Village, where we were presented with certificates of completion and an autographed photo from Eric. A Google Drive folder has been promised to which we can upload our best shots for feedback, presumably this week or next. [Update 02 March 2016: Three weeks later and there has been no contact from Eric. I checked with a coursemate to be sure I hadn't been left off the mailing list.]

I approached ten individuals or groups across the day. Only one group of ladies refused, but after I offered to help them take a group photo using one of their cameras, they allowed me take a photo with mine. Otherwise, no one objected. I could have easily taken more than ten. There was time and plenty of subjects. But I felt like I would be taking photos just for the sake of taking photos, not because I wanted to take a photo of someone interesting. I’ve done the kind of shooting Eric is promoting as part of coursework at OCA, which I wrote about here, but hadn’t much followed up or continued because I find this kind of work, this repeated interaction with people, tiring. I think I’m actually pretty good at it. One of the Nigerians I met yesterday said he was impressed by the way I presented myself to request a photo. Maybe he was flattering me to find out how he might use me, but I know I have a soft voice and an easy presence that it is often found nonthreatening, even comfortable or soothing. Perhaps I ought to consider doing more of this.

And that leads me to some concluding thoughts. The day was well spent. I got out of the house and into a neighborhood I don’t often visit, met some interesting people with whom I might build long-term relationships, took a few interesting images, and began to reconsider an aspect of photographic practice I have sidelined. The one major disappointment was the lack of actual teaching and feedback and the course fee.

Photographically speaking, ISO 1600 seems excessive. Eric thinks the grain adds some aesthetic effect. I do not. Using flash to fill in dark areas produces some interesting images. I typically don’t use it and found a good reason not to: long recycle time (according to this, up to 7.2 sec). Ideally, shooting should be done as quickly as possible. (Excellent review here to assist in tweaking my camera’s flash performance.) I note on review that I didn’t produce any head shots, suggesting I don’t feel comfortable getting in that tight. Best I did was mid-abdomen up. So, there’s something to challenge myself with on the next outing.

Finally, I don’t intend any disrespect to Eric and assume he will take this in the manner in which it was written, as an honest evaluation of one person’s experience. I quizzed a few coursemates on theirs and no one offered any pointed criticism, so they were either happy with the class or unwilling to criticize the instructor before a relative stranger. Your mileage may vary.

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Images from the course photowalk