Birmingham Photography Festival, the first of its kind. It has made it a point to showcase a wide range of talent. The event was organised by a creative trio of photographers – Fraser McGee, Beth Astington and Martin O’Callaghan. This team, and the festival, supports both amateur and professional photography in Birmingham. They share images, organise events and workshops for photographers, and create a community of like-minded people who are passionate about photography. Now called the Birmingham Festival of Photography, it is only helped by a team of passionate photographers. Read more about the festival and its history at birminghamski.com.
The birth of an idea
The three know each other because they run IGERS Birmingham, and as part of that they organise events and workshops for photographers. They come to these events for a reason, they take pictures. By the way, IGERS Birmingham is a community of engaged and active creative people working in and around the city to promote photography, Birmingham and the local community. But mostly the members of this community take photographs and publish them online. The idea of the festival was born after the community members decided to hold a one-day event dedicated to photography and photography.
Overall, IGERS Birmingham did a lot to promote photography. Events, talks, and discussions were open to everyone. But with the help of festival The young people wanted to create a forum where well-known national photographers could come and discuss their business, their passion, their work, and the life of the community.
That’s how the idea came about, and then they started thinking about how to implement it. How to make everything interesting and interactive, how to present everything quickly and attractively. We decided that each person would have 5 minutes and 3 slides, and the presenter would be able to talk about anything, as long as what they were talking about was related to photography. It was decided that this format would be quite interesting, if only because one of the most important topics is photography and the community that creates it. In addition, this format will differ from a photo club because it is much more interactive for the photography community.
It took several months to understand how life-affirming and interesting this idea was. This time was not wasted, as it turned out that live communication was interesting and exciting in itself, so the events were of a high standard. The speakers were of high quality, although the presentations were made in a more accessible form, for different people, from professionals to amateurs.
The panel discussions at the meetings included people from all four major photographic disciplines. We’re talking about street photography, landscape photography, architecture, and cityscapes. IGERS Birmingham thinks this is a really good thing because all the participants will have different topics to talk about and will talk about different things. It will mostly be people who are well-known in Birmingham in the photography field, so that attendees will not be afraid to ask questions and find out what they are interested in.
The community members believe that one of the advantages of Birmingham in this kind of work is that there are many people like them who live and just do things in the city, often at their own expense. This is a good sign of how the city is creatively bringing things to life. There is also a real growth in entrepreneurship.
Local financial success
Speaking of entrepreneurship. The organisers of the Birmingham Photo Festival did not want to make money from it at all, they believed that it would be enough to cover their own expenses for organising the event. Therefore, they tried to make the price as affordable as possible so that everyone could come. The organisers clearly succeeded.
At the same time, they did not hide the fact that they were quite nervous. After all, they said, they had never charged for an event before and were not sure how people would react. After all, everything IGERS Birmingham had done before was and is free of charge. Imagine their surprise when the first 50 tickets were sold out in just an hour. Initially, the plan was to sell a hundred tickets, not to be too bold and ambitious, but this number of tickets sold out in a few days, so they even had to move to a larger venue.
This financial success, albeit local, surprised them and reinforced the idea that they were doing something that people needed, that could please someone, bring them pleasure, and possibly make them happy.
No sooner had the debut Birmingham Photo Festival ended than its organisers started thinking about the next gathering of people interested in photography and, in a good way, sick of it.
The thought that what they were doing would have negative consequences or that no one would be interested was not even allowed. And with such a positive attitude, success was not long in coming.
So, given the very positive reaction the organisers received for their first attempt, they began planning the second meeting of people who were not indifferent to photography. The plan was to extend the festival beyond two days.
A successful debut
Analysing the first experience of holding such meetings of people who are not indifferent to photographic art, the organisers concluded that one of the positive things that was achieved this time was the involvement of people, who, for a debut, were very numerous. They gather in one space and can share their experiences.
For example, everyone takes turns photographing the same thing. But the photos still turn out differently, because someone sees this thing from one side, someone from the other. By the way, the organisers believe that it is important to understand this when documenting the city, as it can be quite diverse, and this is good.
Usually, in photography, a master works alone, but in order to learn, to find out something new in the speciality, a team of like-minded people is very important, it allows you to learn from each other.
At first glance, the photographers who come to these meetings have nothing in common, they work in completely different jobs, there are students and pensioners, younger and older, but they are engaged in photography and this unites them.
People came to the festival events and noticed that photography improves their mental health, strengthens their psyche. This is also a very pleasant moment of such meetings. Communication and exchange of experience is a very important component of the meetings. Initially, some people came to learn something about photography, and then stayed longer to get to know someone and become part of the community.
Plans for the future
Another benefit of the IGERS Birmingham community and the Birmingham Photo Festival is to get as many people interested as possible. Then it will be a plus for the industry as a whole and for the city. After all, these people will buy a camera, visit Birmingham more often, learn something interesting about it. There was a time when Birmingham was kind of quiet, but now it’s back to people wanting to take good pictures.
Nowadays IGERS Birmingham has quite a few members and like-minded people who take pictures and want to develop in photography. There are those who take pictures on their phones and are happy with that. There are those who just use the automatic settings on their new camera, and there are people who know everything about the camera and how to use every setting. These people communicate with each other, which means they learn from each other. This means that the stereotypes of photography are bound to be broken.
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