Nic Dunlop Visit

Nic Dunlop is world reknown author, photographer and photo-journalist, who came into college to give our group an insight to the type of work and photography he does. He did this by talking to us along with showing a powerpoint he had put together of his best photographs he had taken over the years, allowing us to hear the stories that follow the images. I found out that most of his work is about story telling and documenting current affairs based in Thailand and Burma. I like the idea of storytelling through imagery. For almost all of his projects he will find influential/interesting people and give insight into their everyday lives allowing you to see the stories they have to tell, documenting it through a series of photographs and books. He uses photographs in particular because no matter which language your speak/read or whether your literate or illiterate, everybody can look at a photography project of his, and get a sense of what's going on in these peoples lives because imagery and pictures are so universal.

He told us that many of his projects can take up to 2-3 years to complete, but when taking a shoot he will always follow these four following rules:

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There must be a portrait image of the person's story he is trying to tell.

There must be an action shot of this person doing the daily activities or job they do.

There must be a detailed shot which is generally a close up shot of the action shots he takes.

There must be an establishing shot.

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The establishing shot is where Dunlop photographs the location or the scene of the persons story he is telling or where the current affair is happening. What I really like about his work, is that while most of his projects are based on photographing people, he always seems to get a balance by getting some really bold, eyecatching landscape images in his establishing shots. Overall I found this very interesting because he has a range of different styled photos which fit together in one project.

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After his talk, Nic gave the whole group a very quick half an hour task to go out into town and find a stranger to photograph. In doing this, we were only allowed to take four shots, following the four rules mentioned earlier. I decided to go into a cafe coffee shop where I photographed an action shot of the cafe worker called Arun making a coffee, an establishing shot of the cafe itself, a portrait of Arun and finally a detailed shot of the coffee he made.

If I were to either to re-do the shoot or had more time, I think that instead of the establishing shot, shown to the right, rather than taking the shot from inside the cafe I would take one from outside the cafe as I think this would set the location slightly better. As well as this, maybe for the detailed shot I think I would take a close up shot of the coffee beans rather than the coffee itself, this is because it then shows the details and specifics of what goes into the coffee. Despite this, overall I think I managed to complete the task Nic Dunlop set us to a decent standard considering the time frame we had (half an hour), compared to to some of his, taking up to 3 years so I am fairly happy with the photos I produced.