I was at the airport, waiting anxiously for my flight. Everything had gone smoothly so far so I had loads of time since I had arrived very early (I don’t ever want to miss another flight 😆). But my nervousness wouldn’t even let me have a coffee. I hadn’t left Europe since 2019 and hadn’t travelled a long distance on my own in much longer than that.
The destination on my ticket said Nepal, a place I’d been wanting to visit for a long time.
A couple of years ago, my friend Matt started offering street photography workshops. I’ve been to Barcelona, India and Colombia with Matt (and a bunch of other photographers) before, knowing very little about the rules and themes of street photography. In hindsight, those trips were a mix of travel photography and documenting life outside of my own culture.
Anyway, Matt is an excellent teacher and besides the fact that I could learn tonnes from him, booking his workshop meant I could travel to Kathmandu and not have to research places to visit and photograph. I know that sounds like I was being lazy but actually I was just excited to explore a different country without expectations, without researching what other people had photographed and without having to make decisions on where to go. So I went with a pretty open mind and a lot of storage on my SD cards.
Looking back, I wish I’d given myself a couple of days ahead of the workshop to get a bit settled into my surroundings and the culture. However, I didn’t have the time or the money to stretch this trip beyond the week-long adventure. If I did this again though, I would add a few days before the workshops started (and I would recommend that to you too, if you ever plan to join one of Matt’s trips).
The thing I was most excited about was documenting life in a different country and a very different culture to my own (Germany) and different to the one I’m living in now (UK). I haven’t exposed myself to a lot of that since Covid but I feel it’s important to be aware of how life looks in other parts of the world, how people interact and what they value.
I learned a lot about myself on this trip – and about how and what I like to photograph. Because it turns out, following the rules of street photography alone doesn’t interest me if there isn’t a story in front of me I can or want to connect with.
My work is very documentary-led, in my personal life as well as for my family photography. It’s about capturing interactions and connections rather than “just” clever compositions or playing with light and shadow. However, bringing those elements together can create some stunning work and it’s something that after this workshop I will definitely pay more attention to.
There are a number of themes you can follow in street photography – such as colour matching, complementary colours, pattern matching, symmetry, juxtaposition ect. My favourite photos don’t feature a lot of those elements. And for the first few days of the trip, I kept getting annoyed at myself for not “seeing right”. But actually, my images show what’s important to me and what I pay attention to in the world. It’s less about what it looks like and more about the deeper story.
So in a way, while I tried to fight it, I stayed true to my own values when raising my camera during this trip. It’s comforting to know that I do a lot of things unconsciously. I think that’s why sometimes I have a hard time explaining why I photograph the way I do or what gets me to push the trigger. It’s not always something I can control or am consciously aware of…
I had 4 wonderful people alongside me on this workshop. We were a very international bunch which made the whole experience really interesting. While we spent a week together, shooting the same locations, seeing the same or very similar things – our photos are very different for the most part.
Matt made a slideshow of our favourite 15 images (per person) which he presented to us on the last day as a way to celebrate our adventure.
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve come back but life made it so that I haven’t had a lot of time digesting or processing the experience. But even now, looking through the photos I did managed to create, makes me proud and inspires me to keep pushing my own perceptions of what I can do.
This was 100% an exercise of stretching my comfort zone. I might talk more about this in the future but for now, I hope you liked my view of Kathmandu. I may never return (there are too many places in the word I still want to see) but I can definitely recommend a visit!
