Steve McCurry in London

[Nick De Marco]

Went to see Steve McCurry give a lecture tonight at the Cochrane Theatre in London, as part of the promotion for his Magnum exhibition.

Great tour de force of his recent and old work, with him giving many interesting explanations of how he took many of his famous shots. I suppose the main message from his talk, for me, was keep roaming the streets until you find that person/situation for a photo, and when you do, don't just take a couple of photos with the person, but take 20 or 30, organise their surroundings as much as you can, and then you might get something worth keeping.

He is also very much a digital convert now. He said if anything he thinks digital is now better than film and certainly allows more freedom for the type of photography he does, especially in low light situations.

Bought a couple more of his books at a discount price and queued up to get them signed. Everyone was taking photos of him, with digital SLRs, mobile phones or other things which flashed. I pulled out my Leica M8 to his great interest, ("is that a digital one?") and took a few in low light at f1.2 (on the Nockton 35mm f1.2, which is currently one of my favourite lenses because of it's performance at low light). He seemed impressed with the camera ("that sounds like it will be a good photo"). Here is my favourite at f1.2

 

[briandaly]

Looks like you're applying his advice to great effect already🙂

 

[jaffa_777]

Hi Nick, what a great opportunity to meet an awesome photographer, I am jealous.

So are you saying that Steve openly admits he sets things up for his photo's? I have heard this but didn't know whether it was true or not?

I would be really interested to see some of his work on digital, did you get to see any? It's just that when I think of Steve's work my mind sees Kodachrome. I just wonder if he trys to achieve this look with digital and does it look different to his older work which is amazing.

 

[maddoc]

Great to see that you had the opportunity to go to his presentation and also talk with him. I like this photo you took of him, quite a lot, nice shot.

 

[Nick De Marco]

Thanks for the comments. I like the photo too.
Jaffa, I am not sure whether I should say "sets them up". There are obviously many of his photos he saw and just took. For example the porter in Bombay sleeping on a railway bench with a dog sleeping underneath. But even then he saw the porter hours before the photo and waited for the right moment. On other occasions he will follow a subject until they have the right background. And as he usually takes a few photos of the same subject he might ask they relax, look this way or whatever. The famous Afghan girl, he showed many good photos of her before the famous one, but she was very shy and covering some of hr face or did not have the same intensity. He kept working to try and get something more powerful and through translaters asked her to show he whole face etc, until he got that shot.

Some of the recent work he showed was about Aids and treatment for it in Vietnam. That was all digital. The photos were great but looking at all of them in the presentation you would not know which were slides or which digital.

 

[Michiel Fokkema]

Hi,
I've met him in Amsterdam. Same way as you did.
Some pictures.