Polishing Your Passion for Photography with Carlos Esguerra

 

When in Manila, make sure to keep you eyes open for unique opportunities. They don’t come often, and a perfect example of that is the photography workshop by Carlos Esguerra.

Carlos Esguerra is a New York-based Filipino photographer, who has received more than 50 national and international awards. He conducted his first photography workshop in the country recently and it was a really rare opportunity to learn from a multi-awarded landscape and architecture photographer. 

Polishing Your Passion for Photography with Carlos Esguerra

 

Carlos Esguerra talked about essential equipment, exposure, capturing sharp images, composition, the color of light, and taking a picture versus creating an image.

People say experience is the best teacher, but because life is too short to have to go through all those experiences just to learn, it’s advisable to attend workshops like these and learn from the experiences of others. If you’re lucky, you could learn from someone like Carlos Esguerra. 

As a total newbie in photography, I was surprised at how much math was actually involved once he started to talk about ISO, shutter speed, and aperture. It took a while before I could get all of the math, but Carlos Esguerra repeated and simplified it, even graciously entertaining questions after and during the talk. 

When Carlos Esguerra talked about composition, he noted the two things that he considers: he takes photos of something when he looks at it and says, “Wow!” He also asks himself why he is taking each photo. 

One of his tips to the attendees was “Click, don’t wait.” He shared personal stories of how he shot some of his award-winning photos, some of which were simply taken at the right place at the right time. Had he waited for another second, the opportunity would have been lost. 

 

 

This is an award-winning photo by Carlos Esguerra entitled “Solitario.” (You could check his other works in his website)

It’s one of his examples of why you should “click, don’t wait.”Just when he was wondering which subject to shoot because everything was purely white, he saw a lone man from a distance. Had he waited, the shadow would have consumed the man. But he took the shot, and won numerous awards from it. 

What I liked about the workshop is how attendees sent the photos that they took to the event organizers beforehand. Carlos Esguerra himself critiqued the photos and demonstrated how to edit these photos to make them better. One of the questions he always gets is whether or not he edits his photos. He edits his photos, but does not manipulate them. He likened Photoshop to the dark room before the age of digital editing. 

The event was well-organized and fun to attend, much thanks to TVC Events. If you’re interested in catching other interesting events and workshops, check out TVC Events.

 

 

TVC Events

 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TVCEvents

 

Carlos Esguerra

 

https://www.carlosesguerra.com

 

 

Polishing Your Passion for Photography with Carlos Esguerra