13) Guest Speaker: Niall McDiarmid @ The Martin Parr Foundation - 14/2/18

On Valentines Day we had a guest talk at the Martin Parr Foundation with Niall McDiarmid, in correlation with his exhibition currently running there. My notes from the talk can be seen below.

When Niall started the talk, he highlighted the importance of finding your own style within photography. He found his style from just taking photos of things he liked, and then after later reviewing them he realised his style was colour, shape and interesting people.

After realising he was so interested in taking portraits, he started to travel around the country taking photos in places that haven't previously been well represented by photography. His process involved looking out for punchy high street colours, and then placing his subject in the environment he had found. I think this is a really good way to do environmental portraiture, because it allows you to choose an aesthetically pleasing environment and work on the framing before you put the subject in the environment, speeding up the process of the picture making. I also feel this shorter time scale would make the stranger he's picked out more likely to say yes to having their photo taken.

Another skill Niall shared was the way he chats to the subject while setting up the shot. I feel I need to do this more in my own practice to keep the subject interested and not feeling awkward, but I find it hard to do two things at once.

Following on from his solo portraits, he then went on to challenge himself to take group shots, because asking more than one stranger to be in an image is much more of a challenge. He decided to start doing this to observe the interplay between people. For instance he showed an image of some Liverpool builders (I tried finding it online and in his book but it wasn't featured) which shows lots of different dynamics between the three people depicted. You could instantly see which individual was the boss, due to his more relaxed demeanour compared to the other two individuals who looked a little more unsure of the situation. Niall also highlighted that he's not interested in these individuals stories, but what the people look like visually.

Another tip he gave us was that if we're shooting a small series based around one area, try to shoot it in a specific light to give it a repeated style and aesthetic, like he did for his project 'Via Vauxhall'. I thought this was really important when considering my own project on the van dwellers, as it will give me work a consistent style.

One point that he mentioned that I thought was really interesting was the fact that he doesn't get people to sign model release forms, because he feels it creates a barrier for your work. To some extent I do agree with this, however it could cause issues if an individual he's photographed doesn't want their image in one of his books. He went on to say that street photography is "fair game", and that people love looking back at street photography to relive the distinct styles of the time, so you should "press on" and not be phased by the ethical issues some people raise. Despite this, I'm still going to complete model release forms for my own project because it's displaying more intimate scenes such as the inside of their homes, which they could potentially not want others to see.

Overall I found the talk pretty interesting, and it was great to have Niall speak whilst being surrounded by his exhibition itself, because it gave his words a lot more context. I really enjoyed looking around the exhibition afterwards, and the images are great at showing people's individuality from town to town.

#creativeinteractions #guestspeaker