Category: London

“Being educated by photography is not like being educated by older forms of art.  For one thing, there are many more images around claiming our attention. The inventory started in 1839 and since then just about everything has been photographed, or so it seems.  This very insatiability of the photographing eye changes our world.  In teaching us a new visual code, photographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe.  They are a grammar and, even more importantly, an ethics of seeing.  Finally, the most grandiose result of the photographic enterprise is to give us the sense that we can hold the whole world in our heads—as an anthology of images.

To collect photographs is to collect the world.”

I would rather have flowers in my hair than gold around my neck. I walked this market twice, the first time with my nose, the second with my eyes.  The first thing I am going to do when I get back to Mexico is go to the market and buy flowers for the house.  When the kitchen smells like baking bread and there are flowers on the table, I know I am home.

A rose in sunlight is nature.
A rose in the dark is poetry.
~Terri Guillemets

Here is an image from the Portrait Photography class at the City Academy.  It was taught by Leigh Keily, who shoots the royal family and celebrities and does amazingly complex commercial work.  The class lasted seven hours.  Students are required to shoot exclusively in manual mode.   We learned how to do automatic refocusing for runway walking and spent hours and hours on lighting techniques and studio setup.

Here is one of the images I created during the Lifestyle Photography course at City Academy in London.  Lifestyle photography is interesting because images must be designed to incorporate copy.  Students took turns modeling.  This is Yiyi.  In casting terms, she owns “cute.”   I am learning so much.  Going to Europe to study was a good choice, even if I did miss summer.  Man-o-man, this weather is HORRIBLE!