Missouri Photo Workshop – Marta Iwanek (part 2)
Embracing the Bubble
Once a story is approved, participants have until Friday at noon to complete the photography. There is also another catch – we are given a 400-frame limit. No pictures can be deleted, even if you accidentally photograph the ground with your hip. This proved a very valuable lesson to a photographer like myself who has learned to take photos on a digital camera where every frame is free. It made me change my mindset, from everything being free to making every moment count. I could see the results almost right away.
It forced me to slow down, think about the telling moments for this story and put myself in the best position to anticipate them. It also made me pay attention and really observe what was happening. Most of all, I think it made me put down my camera and just talk to the people I was photographing.
Margo Nichols greets daughter JilliAnn Mathews, 11, and stepson Luca Nichols, 11, as they come home from school on Tuesday September 24, 2013, in Trenton, Missouri. (Photo – Marta Iwanek)
Sometimes we can get nervous and photograph a lot because we’re scared we’ll miss something. When in reality, photographing a lot makes you miss the real moments. The real moments you only get from talking to people to understand their story, observing and having them trust you with their story.
I think the story I chose was difficult in a way because a lot of it happened in the past. For instance, how do you show this family’s past tragedy in a present day photo? Not just a photo of a memorial or a gravestone but a telling emotional photo that shows what loss means and what another person is feeling in a moment of time that you are there to witness. It was a subtle story but it really forced me to pay attention.
I spent each day with the family. I was there when they woke up, boarded the bus with the kids, went to middle school with them, went to daily football practice and was there for the bedtime routine. During the week I was with the family, it was the eight-month anniversary of Codi’s death and they allowed me to visit the gravesite with them too.
Luca Nichols, 11, hugs his stepmother Margo Nichols at his grandparents’ home in Jamesport, Missouri, on Thursday, September 26, 2013. The family had just visited the grave of Codi Nichols, Luca’s older brother who died eight months ago in a car crash. (Photo – Marta Iwanek)
Every evening, back at the Missouri Photo Workshop headquarters, the faculty would present their work and talk about their processes for their stories. We would also present two to four pictures from our own stories to show how we were progressing. One line that stuck in my head was not to photograph the what that was happening but the why. Not getting stuck in picture-taking process but really waiting for those moments that speak to why people do the things they do and what they are feeling.
That meant, for instance, when I visited Codi’s gravesite with the family, not to just photograph the grave but to watch for the telling interactions between the family members that show how they are really feeling.
Editing went well into the evening on the Friday of the Missouri Photo Workshop. (Photo – Marta Iwanek)
On Friday, after we handed in our final memory cards, we wrote our captions and summaries and we did a final edit with our coaches. While we worked on this, we shared our work, looked for others’ advice and talked about our stories. The workshop had a very supportive atmosphere. Everyone there loves what they do and wants to help each other learn and get better by sharing their experiences and knowledge.
The people of Trenton view the stories produced during the Missouri Photo Workshop. (Photo – Marta Iwanek)
There was a final slideshow and then prints of our stories were presented to the Trenton community at the local high school. It brought the town together to see a part of themselves that maybe they hadn’t seen before.
Throughout the whole experience, it was also interesting to watch how many of the photographers’ stories intertwined. I was photographing at the middle school and would bump into another photographer working on another story down the hall. Sometimes another student at the middle school would run up to me and say, “One of you guys was at my house yesterday!”
It’s amazing to watch how different lives connect to each other and it makes you realize how there are stories everywhere, even in a small city of 6,000 like Trenton, Missouri.
(The first part of this article is here.)
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Toronto-based photographer Marta Iwanek is a recent graduate of the Loyalist College photojournalism program. In her final year at Loyalist, Marta was awarded the Shaun Best Memorial Scholarship for outstanding potential and promise. Before taking the time to pursue visual storytelling, she graduated from Ryerson University with a Bachelor of Journalism.
Marta has interned at the Waterloo Region Record in Waterloo, Ontario, and at Metroland Media in the Toronto area. She has been a freelance photo editor for Getty Images in Toronto, a multimedia editor and writer for Ryerson Review of Journalism, and she was a reporter, videographer and editor at OMNI-TV in Toronto.
“I am interested in exploring subjects that deal with community and commitment – what we gain from it and what happens when it is lost.” Marta says. She is currently working on a story about home care for the elderly.
