I find working as an event photographer at messy church a fun and challenging experience. As part of the brief, it is necessary to delivery photographs which portray the event without obviously giving away young children’s identity.
Although I do shoot traditional portraits at messy church, these are not used by me for my blog or any other online use. This gives me inspiration to treat it a creative problem and come up with alternative ideas. Often the photos are more original and exciting by doing this.
Some of the photographs included in this blog post have quite a vintage style to them. I did minimum Photoshop work on these but I think the attire or the people in these shots give an old fashioned look. I think the colour palette also gives this impression.
This blog post is dedicated to the very abstract photos from the March 2012 event. I had a lot of fun with this theme of photography. I thought my untraditional approach worked quite well, because it added a new element of interest to the more obvious shots.
Often there are a lot of kids running around and I find motion blur is one great way to describe the kind of fun chaos. When experimenting with new ideas, I gain confidence when they turn out well. I would say I am quite an experimental photographer; I like to try out new ideas.
My photography skills have grown through event work for messy church and some themes in my photography have developed. For example, hands are a key element to much of the photographic work I do for messy church.
By taking these kinds of shots, it is possible to get a sense of the people who attend the event without revealing children’s identity. Often shooting children can be a difficult issue, particularly when shots may be used for online purposes. I find it challenging, but in a fun and creative way and it develops my skills in a positive way.
Each time I volunteer at messy church, I find new ideas and inspiration. Topics are picked out for each session and games are designed around this. Themes relate to a variety of religious stories from the bible.
I’ve often noticed they pick one main game for each event and then work in a variety of smaller games around this. This session, the kids were creating cars made out of old boxes and paper plates. This seemed to be the most popular game from the day.
There were lots of photographic opportunities; this blog post incorporates all the activities based shots. For example macro shots of the kid’s art work and other images which give an idea of what games were available.
This is the second time I’ve visited Gateshead at night, on both occasions I came to see a concert. We went to see Olly Murs on this occasion and stayed in a hotel by the Millennium Bridge.
It was very scenic walking towards the city from the hotel. We must have picked a perfect time to walk because there was a beautiful sunset over Gateshead.
After coming back from the concert, it was quite late, and we got some interesting night shots of the millennium bridge and the sage.
I have been to two concerts now, Olly Murs being the 2nd. I came to Newcastle for a weekend away with a few friends and watched the concert on the first night.
We were sat somewhere in the middle of the metro arena. We got a good view of Olly when he walked across a long path which came down from the ceiling.
I organised a selection of photographs for this blog post, I found the photography process in the arena to be quite tricky, because it was so dark and difficult to get sharp photos.
Despite this I produced a couple I was quite pleased with. My favourite includes a monochrome shot, with people in the foreground and a figure on stage in the distance.
