Portland Photo Tour: Fundamentals of Photojournalism

For my birthday last September, my mom gave me the gift of a Portland Photo Safari. Not only did she give me one, but Michelle too! The safari was created and lead by Jennifer Costello, a seasoned professional photographer. I absolutely loved it. I learned a lot and Jennifer is awesome. She is really good at explaining things in a way you will remember, plus we were learning and doing at the same time. We took the general F-Stops & Shutter Speeds class. You can learn more and see some of my photos from that class here.

A few months ago, we saw her photo tour come up on Groupon again, so we jumped at the chance to get another one of her classes under our belts. In fact, I love her tours so much, I bought two because I couldn't decide between the newer tours she has to offer. She has changed the name of her classes from safaris to tours and added a load of new topics her tours revolve around.

A few Sundays ago, Michelle and I took her Fundamentals of Photojournalism tour that takes place at Portland Saturday Market. I am very interested in improving my photojournalism skills and love Portland's Saturday Market, so it was a no-brainer.

Jennifer did a quick review of the basics and talked about how people think of photojournalism being that one epic TIME magazine cover shot of the year, however, that isn't even necessarily realistic, even for professional photographers. She talked about capturing 3 elements of your environment to tell the story through photos: big picture or macro level, portrait and detail or micro shots. My favorite and ones I find most interesting, as well as easier to capture are the detail shots. Here's my attempt (without any photoshop correction) using the balloon maker street artist man.

I don't feel like I capture people very well. But I'm trying. Here's one another series of a hula hooper street performer.

Finally, here is a man at his booth, shaping clay into personalized gnomes. Wouldn't you like to be made into a garden gnome?

I feel that I need to work on the big picture shots, capturing the environment of what is going on. I need to work on making sure I have a distinct subject, as well as making sure the shot isn't too busy. Here are a couple last photos I liked from booths at Portland Saturday Market.

You can see all of Michelle's shots here, here and here. Next, I will post my sweet shots from the Night Photography - Skyline & Bridges tour. I am giddy about how much I learned on that tour!