Fantastic Photography Seminar
Saturday, October 07, 2006
Jiatong (Thanks bro!) invited me to a fantastic photography seminar organized by the SMU Photographic Society yesterday night.
Here is a short recap of the contents of the seminar:
Tay Kay Chin talked about his personal work on a pictorial of Singapore which he has just published. He brought me on a Singapore journey through his emotionally provocative works; he brought me to sites and sights which I have never seen. These provocative works have brought him some trouble. Apparently, he depicted a man sleeping on the street and this picture was sensored in his book: Panoramic Singapore. The reason given by the authority: there isn't any homeless people in Singapore. Lesson learnt from K. C. Tay and Richard Avedon: All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth (quoted from Richard Avedon).
Darren Soh, a commercial and editorial photographer commissioned to produce pictures in a gift-pictorial for IMF-World Bank Seminar VIPs, talked about balancing work and photography.
Samuel Seow, a lawyer, gave a super entertaining presentation on copyrights.
Wong Maye-E and Terence Tan were supposed to give a presentation together. Terence was absent due to last-minute work duty. Maye-E (Associated Press) and Terence (Straits Times) are both photojournalist and married to each other. It was very interesting to know that the couple actually keep ground breaking news from each other to maintain a certain degree of exclusive coverage. JT and I were thrilled to see the high-quality version of photos of photojournalists; newspaper prints don't give justice to the captured quality.
Ken Seet, a commercial photographer, described his transition from film black and white to digital. I thought he was the most practical speaker of all when he gave a live demo on digital black and white conversion. In the Vineyard was converted from RAW and post-processed based on tips given by Ken. A very, very entertaining speaker; I especially like his quiet B&W landscape.
I asked the question of whether a formal education in photography is important to a professional. The unanimous answer was no, except if you want to teach photography in an institution. To learn on the job, observe the masters, never stop learning, and keep taking pictures were the advices given to me by the panel.
posted byWilliam at 8:36 PM