Mastering Image Interpretation

We ven­ture out with our cam­era because we see things we feel are appeal­ing in what­ev­er way and raise our cam­eras to our eye. This is only the begin­ning of express­ing how we feel about the sub­ject we have photogtraphed.

There are so many phras­es out there relat­ing to the prac­tice of sit­ting at our desks, open­ing an image file, and lit­er­al­ly alter­ing what we see in front of us. All too often the process is con­veyed as a per­plex­ing and elab­o­rate ven­ture and becomes a rather dry expe­ri­ence. This is, for the cre­ative pho­tog­ra­ph­er, a huge hand­i­cap as many visu­al artists will be embark­ing on some­thing that draws them away from creativity.

This online pho­tog­ra­phy work­shop will not be about slid­ers and masks, but explo­rations into how you con­vey a mes­sage through your indi­vid­ual images and how to fine tune your mes­sage. We will share the back sto­ries to the image, why you were com­pelled to take it, and most impor­tant­ly, how you want it to ​‘feel’. We will of course share many tech­niques that will improve your pro­cess­ing skills, but pri­mar­i­ly we want to delve into the mes­sage and nar­ra­tive of the image and what it means to you who took it. 

The very mean­ing of the word ​‘inter­pre­ta­tion’ means the act of explain­ing some­thing, or the very way of explain­ing. For a pho­tog­ra­ph­er this means free­dom and expres­sion, not fol­low­ing a set of rules or guide­lines through the dia­logue box­es on a com­put­er pro­gramme. As with all forms of pho­tog­ra­phy, it is all about the heart and mind of the pho­tog­ra­ph­er and what they want to say through their work.

This pho­tog­ra­phy work­shop is about you and how you can refine your images to deliv­er a mes­sage in a way of your choos­ing. It is always enlight­en­ing to move away from tech­nique towards the nar­ra­tive of an image, after all, as pho­tog­ra­phers we are all try­ing to com­mu­ni­cate visu­al­ly. More often than not, huge changes to your pro­cess­ing skills or the image itself are not need­ed, but the abil­i­ty in notic­ing the sub­tle nuances and being able to nur­ture char­ac­ter from with­in the image can make a sub­stan­tial dif­fer­ence in the sto­ry the image is telling.

You will be set tasks that will encour­age you to go away and explore how your indi­vid­ual images can grow through self-reflec­tion. We will look for­ward to reg­u­lar online catch up ses­sions which serve as a plat­form to share thoughts and dis­cus­sion between the group. Paul and Michael will be there through­out this jour­ney to help and refine your work and there will be indi­vid­ual one to one ses­sions arranged.

Our group online ses­sions will be held for 2 hours at 7.00pm UK time on the 21^st Novem­ber, 29^th Novem­ber, 9^th Decem­ber and 16^th Decem­ber. 1 to 1 ses­sions will be sched­uled at times mutu­al­ly con­ve­nient to your­self and your tutor dur­ing week 2 and week 3 of the course.