Finally got a chance to take part in a workshop here in Taiwan on photography. Received the syllabus just a few hours ago. Wow! It’s full on! So here’s my initial submission to get the ball rolling.
BURN MY EYE 亞洲首次街拍攝影工作坊— BURN MY EYE STREET PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP
We have invited three photographers from the well-known BURN MY EYE photography collective, Andrew Kochanowski from the United States, Japan’s Junku Nishimura, and Taiwan’s T.C. Lin, to hold the group’s first street photography workshop in Asia. The workshop, which will be limited to no more than 15 students, will involve time spent photographing in and around the historic neighborhood of Tua Tiu Tiann in old Taipei, on-site feedback and guidance from the workshop leaders on subjects ranging from shooting to editing to sequencing, and reviews of student work, making for an excellent chance to take your photography to the next level. Selected photographic work from workshop students will also be printed for exhibition at a local gallery.
Ok… here’s my selection of images. I had no real criteria for submission except that it was ‘street’ so I took it literally. Things that I had seen on the street (yes, even kitchen tiles) taken and posted on my blog here since September 2016.
I hope that I captured a little bit of energy from the street: Lines, Patterns, Shapes and Bubbles. After all, who doesn’t like bubbles? That’s it for my submission. Do they represent my work? Well, in a sense. These pictures are displayed randomly.
Ever since I went to Paris, and stood under the Eiffel Tower looking upwards, I took a photo of the center askew. I guess I’ve been interested in lines, geometry, shapes, and so on. That’s what caught my eye of the Bridge. I loved the hulking shape that rises through the picture, and breaks the edges in several places.
The Kitchen Floor was a surprise: its symmetry and age were all on show in the middle of the street, probably as the result of road widening works. The door had been moved, but no one had taken up the ceramic tiles. Lovely.
Masks have always interested me, and you’ll note that throughout the pictures here I’ve taken a few masks. I think it was Craig Ferguson’s images of masks that piqued my desire to take masks.
Taking a Selfie was one of those moments caught by the participants enjoyment of where they were. The girls were enjoying the ‘selfie moment’ and I was able to capture that. Thank you, ladies!
Lastly, bubbles… well, if Brian W. likes bubbles, who am I to disagree? Really! It’s just such a contrast of nature and contrivance: the bubble artist controls their creation, but their lives and beauty are almost entirely out of his hands.
I’ll let you know what happens…
Update #1: Apparently I burned their eyes… my photographs were a bit too general. So I went and looked up what “Street Photography”. Until I actually know better, I’ll use Wikipedia’s definition.
Street photography, also sometimes called candid photography, is photography conducted for art or enquiry that features unmediated chance encounters and random incidents within public places. … Street photography does not necessitate the presence of astreet or even the urban environment. (wiki)
There seems to be a debate whether it should include people doing random stuff… I’ll follow the principle. But perhaps I was a bit naive because I thought ‘street’ meant anything you could see on the street. Too broad a definition?
So with my new criteria: including a person, candid, on the street… I chose these from the website.
Any better?