Paul Wilkinson Photography Blog

You should know that I am writing this blog entry whilst sitting on a particularly crowded and damp late night train slurping on one of Marylebone Station’s finest (and admittedly extortionate) coffees surrounded by suits and tourists. You should also know that I’ve just finished Jerry Ghionis’ 1-week workshop in London.

If you’re a pro photographer, you’ll already know of Jerry but if you’re one of our regular visitors who hasn’t heard of him, suffice it to say he’s one of the top ten in the world. He tells you. He’s not slow in coming forward. But then, he kinda deserves it – his images are some of the most stunning you’ll see anywhere. Seriously beautiful.

Anyway, back to my chugging Chiltern Line train. Nothing unusual about being sat on one of these I suppose – I regularly commute in and out of London for clients – except for the fact that, on this particular occassion, every persons figure; every pair of hands; each and every foot and calf muscle; every eye and twitch of a face muscle; well, in short, every bit of every body is now an unavoidable subject of scrutiny…

There’s the woman in green talking particularly loudly on her mobile phone (something I would normally take a distinctly higher moral ground over – come on, we’re in the quiet coach! No-one will complain of course: this is Britain!) should turn her face slightly more to the right (no, my right) and lift her chin a little. Ah, that’s better, a bit of shape to the cheek. Nice. The angle of the light isn’t quite right but if I could just get her to rotate on the spot a tad…

The robust, prematurely balding guy on my left should tilt the top of his head away from me a smidgen and move his hands as if adjusting his tie – a particularly fine, if a little dated, musty burgundy number – that’s it, that’s it. He has a strong, chiselled jaw line in spite of one too many cheeseburgers I suspect. If I could just crop in tight…

The three students on the opposite table should continue to act naturally but if the groom (er., sorry – I mean the student in a check shirt) could just look back at toward me while the other two look away. After all, the Chiltern Line does have some really quite appealing daylight-balanced fluorescent lighting installed on its trains. A cheeky little image with a nice shallow depth of field and…

Oops, better stop there – the woman in the fetching green is off the phone and is now looking at me rather weirdly. Apparently, people-watching quite so intently may not be as socially acceptable as I thought. And I suspect I may have been inadvertently – and possibly alarmingly – tilting my head in the hope she would mirror me (it’s so much easier than describing a pose to someone).

I admit it. I was unprepared for the effect of Jerry’s course, yet somehow it creeps in. Bugger. I have always found myself (possibly annoyingly to those around me) getting excited about a patch of light or the way someone is leaning on a wall or the way a couple are interacting. But this is different. This is going to take some getting used to.

I have rarely, if ever, got emotional about training courses. Call me old fashioned but the mere thought of being in a room for a week with the dawning realisation that, where once you naively thought you were pretty good at something, you are maybe not. Or, at least, possibly not quite as good as you thought you were. But this week, well, somehow, this week has been different

Now don’t get me wrong here, I do love the outcome of training courses – I love the fact that every time I attend one I find new ideas, new angles, new techniques and marketing possibilities and, in general, a slightly self-righteous sense of having taken the time to learn something new. I just don’t like the process of being trained. It hurts. And Jerry’s course is, frankly, no exception. If anything it is worse. Not once did he criticise or was he rude or derogatory – far from it, in fact: he was always totally positive and encouraging – but when he critiques an image you just know if you’ve got it right or not!

The week has been peppered with incredible highs and, at the end of it, I feel strangely battered but utterly elated. This is a workshop the like of which I have never attended before. To say I am exhausted would be to vastly understate my body’s protest. I feel like I’ve been on a month’s course rather than just a week.

But then, the stuff we’ve learned is so far beyond anything I would previously have thought reasonable (or, indeed, possible) for a 1-week course. From body shapes and subtle lighting to business strategies, branding and marketing – every single second has been worthy of the fees. And then some. And it’s certainly not a cheap course. Oh, and I’ve learned some new and strangely exotic Australian explitives!

Actually, I think I now love training. I just don’t know how any other workshop will live up to this one.

Now, if that girl in green would just gaze wistfully into the distince, I think there just might be a photo in there. The catchlights in her eyes are just perfect….

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This entry was posted on Friday, July 17th, 2009, 9:16 am and is filed under Chat, For Website. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.