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When They Know, You’ll Know
You know?
Camera Electronic had the kindness to present Thorsten Overgaard to a roomful of photography enthusiasts one Thursday night. it was an overture to a workshop course to be held by the gentleman over the next days.
Simple format: a series of Thorsten’s images cycling behind him on the screen and a clear explanation of how he goes about what may be classified as street photography.
Except it was not all on the streets. Much of the work we saw was taken indoors in many cities. People figured prominently, even if they were not the central subject - what Thorsten was showing was the images that had caught his eye at the time.
His advice was timeless: always carry a camera. If you do, you are always ready for a scene that presents itself - and you are lore inclined to seek out those views than if you had no recording instrument. You will be more observant.
The first shot you make is often the best - you are not over-thinking the process and your inner vision has taken over.
But don’t stop - if there is one good one, there may be more.
Then, take the results home and look at them as soon as possible -while you have some memory of the context. Select the ones you want and commit them to your filing system - they may be useful for years afterwards. Don’t just shoot and delete - use whatever labelling and selection system your program can support to let you get to those images in the future.
Okay - there will be some flops, but don’t throw them before you have determined why they did not work. You may not have to make the same mistakes repeatedly if you just understand them early on.
Don’t keep the camera buried in a safe bag under lenscaps and cases. Have it out and ready to go, and make sure you know what your settings are. Change in anticipation if you are moving into markedly different light situations.
Make your images go somewhere visible. An editor for a publication, a social media site, a website, your own exhibition…whatever. Better to be seen than hidden.
Note that Thorsten often makes a dual use o his images - both colour and monochrome. RAW files are a distinct advantage for this and he likes the DNG sort that Leica cameras make. I suspect he avoids really complex software programs with many steps to their workflow.
I was delighted to hear all this, and to discover that my new TT Artisan f:0.95 lens makes a dandy recording device under really dark conditions.
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All text and images by Richard Stein
