Got a phonecall while I was teaching that morning. Turned out it was a colleague who worked at PT ECCO Indonesia, a company that produce shoes and leather products based in Sidoarjo. He asked me whether I’m available to give a one day photography workshop for the company’s internal photography team. After discussing several matters, I agreed to the request.
When I visited the company, the representatives told me about issues they frequently deal with their photography team. Basically it’s about the quality of the image they produced, that is not up to publication standard, technical and artistic wise. After digging more information, it turns out that the problem was pretty fundamental, and I was hoped to tackle this issue by sharing the appropriate skill and knowledge, plus giving some actual field practice for better understandings. I said “okay, no problem, let’s do this!”.
Fast forward to D-day, we started early in the morning as planned because so many fundamental things had to be to shared to the team before practice. I had to explain what photograpy is all about, the basic concepts, some technical, artistic and social skill required, even several tips on how to direct people to pose (they needed it, because people photography is what they do most). It’s pretty challenging to deliver all these material in short amount of time (about 3-4 hours), and exhausting as well, hehe :)
After lunchbreak, we continued the workshop with a practice session. With all the available gear, we moved to several appointed spots in the factory and did an actual shoot on each. We tried to photograph people, activities and products, based on the knowledge from the earlier session. I directed them into practice by giving roles, i.e. one acted as the photographer, others as art director, assistant, etc. The team member switched roles in turns, so everyone knew what to do for a specific roles in a photoshoot. It was a good experience for them, and the resulting images improved dramatically compared to their previous ones!
The final session was reviewing the images from the practice session. Based on those results, we made some conclusions and suggestions regarding what the team have to prepare, learn and do to improve themselves in order to produce better images for the company.
Overall, it was fun and engaging experience…I hope the workshop is useful and wishing the team all the best in the future :)