I met up with Angela and Matt yesterday for an engagement portrait session before their wedding next month. We started at the Botanical Garden in Golden Gate Park where there’s lots of cool little spots hidden away between the garden’s plant collections. After that, we ended up at Sutro Heights Park which overlooks Ocean Beach near the Cliff House.
I got back from Foundation Workshop last week and it was an awesome experience. Foundation teaches photojournalism to wedding photographers and the way this happens is pretty intense. There are five teams of five participants and each participant photographs his or her own assignment over two days including editing sessions where most of the team is present and the team leader acts as a photo editor and instructor. And since we were on assignment about eight hours each day, these editing sessions would go well into the night – not to mention presentations and exercises and mentoring sessions and impromptu critiques and networking and having fun and the occasional meal.
The week was nothing but highlights and I wish I had the time to share them all. Here are just a few:
Getting to work closely with my team leader, Greg Gibson, was a huge privilege – Greg’s insights and experiences from a long and distinguished career as a photojournalist were inspiring and he did a great job of working with each of us on our individual challenges.
When I arrived on Sunday, I was happy to see a couple of familiar faces. When I left on Friday, I felt like I was leaving a family behind since we’d all been through so many ups and downs together throughout the week.
My assignment was to document the activities of dog agility instructor Elizabeth Evans at Best Friends Fun Farm. I was nervous at first and there were plenty of challenges for me but it turned out to be one of the best experiences of my life. Just the fact that Elizabeth would let me into her life and allow me to develop a visual story about her in my own way is incredibly moving.
