After a lecture discussing where, as photography students we intend our interest to lead directly, I concluded I would be focusing on Photojournalism. When taking into consideration the photography I have enjoyed producing over the last couple of years, it is clear that I have focused more on documentary imagery, which differs to photojournalism. My photography needs to start capturing moments as they happen, rather than the aftermath. Unfortunately I lack the confidence of working with people, however this needs to end, I need to work on live events and learn how to read my surroundings and engage with an event. To my good fortune and by sheer coincidence I met someone soon after who works in setting up night time events in pubs and clubs. I was speaking to this person and after some general chit chat it came up that I study photography, he told me that he would need a photographer for his events and asked me if I would be interested. I said I would and idiotically added that I’m not sure I’d be good enough because I am not too experienced in this kind of thing. Rather than retracting the offer however, he informed me that some people should be meeting that evening and that I should come by and record the event and see how it goes. I informed him that due to the late notice I could not get an SLR and only had my own simple Digital Camera available, but in the future I would be able to get a hold of better equipment. Thankfully he was happy about this, tonight was to merely be an experiment anyway, perhaps his lack of concern could be correlated to my lack of payment.
If I am completely honest, I was nervous. In fact it took a while for me to begin to take images. I arrived and kind of socialised for a while, had a few drinks to boost my confidence and got chatting to a few people. First the few I actually knew and then I mingled with the foreign bodies. Eventually the camera was to make an appearance. The first photograph I took was of someone I knew, eventually I started roaming round just taking pictures, it wasn’t the most comfortable experience but it was okay and better than I thought it would have been. The quality of the images I have taken are not fantastic, but the images seem to show people having a good time which is what was wanted. I showed them to my latest acquaintance potentially offering me a position as his event photographer and fortunately I was accepted. He liked the images and I am to attend next week’s event. I am taking this opportunity not for the aesthetic of the imagery, which is essentially fruitless to me, however I am doing it for what the subject is. It is people, people I don’t know and people I will have to interact with in order to obtain the imagery.
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