Lill Karin Saltermark

Today I went on a photo safari hosted by the photo museum Foam. I think they where sponsored by redbull 5 pics, but there was so much text in dutch that I just skipped the text and enjoyed the event.

At the beginning I got a map over ten great photo locations in Amsterdam. I followed the map and got inspired by it. One of the tasks of the day was to take a photoseries of five pictures. I went for the theme “thirsty” but I am thinking of going for “coke” instead when I deliver my five photo to foam. Here is some of my pictures untouched.

Thirsty for loooove

After following the map for a while I had to get to Marie Heinekenplein to find a hint to where the lectures of the day would be. When I got there there was a lot of other photographers there looking for a clue. Finaly we found a tiny sticker with a name and a phone number. I texted “small things” to the phone number and got Kerkestraat 58 back.

At Kerkerstraat 58 There where sevrall expiriensed photographers holding lectures. You could also talk to each of them one on one, but I went to too many lectures to get much talking done. The lecture I really wanted to go to was of corse also the one I missed and the place where you could talk to him afterwards was completely overcrowded. I did however get to talk to Elspeth Diederix who gave me some really god advise on how to not have as much stuff in my pictures as I usually do when I take photos in a city. She told me to focus more on one thing and thereby showing people what I want to show them. I think I was the only non dutch speaking at the place, but most of the lectures where okay with speaking in english. That was very much appreciated. Irene Cécilie’s lecture was very inspiering. She talked about how to inspire yourself and gave me 6 great tips that I will keep in mind: 1. Limit your space. deside that you are only going to take pictures in this street, this square, this room ect. 2. Put your brain in a different mode, like playfull, different or naughty. Pretend that you don’t know the world. 3. Look more playfully. which shapes look like each other? compare patterns. look for naughtiness. 4. think playfully. What would it be like if it was different? what does the shape remind me of? 5 Do playfull things. Put stuff in order. Make noise. Do useless things. The most useless stuff can often be the most beautifull stuff. 6 limit yourself. Limit the time, limit the colors, limit the theme, limit yourself to an opinion, limit yourself to an activity like walking.

All in all it was a great experience, so thank you foam for this great experience! I learned a lot.