Workshop Participants
Lauren Hermele is a freelance photographer and multimedia storyteller currently based in Brooklyn, NY. She spent 2009-10 on a photography Fulbright Fellowship in Romania. During her time on the fellowship, she worked on a series of documentary photo projects and taught photography workshops at local Universities and to teens in collaboration with the US based non-profit, "Listen to My Pictures." She is currently freelancing and teaching Digital Photography to young teens at a charter school in Brooklyn. Lauren is an ICP graduate of the Photojournalism and Documentary Photography program and has been published and exhibited both nationally and internationally. Previously, Lauren lived in Barcelona, Spain for nine years where she worked as a translator, editor and photographer.
Lauren participated in the March 2012 MediaStorm Storytelling Workshop. She had the following to say about her experience:
The intense passion, dedication and respect for the creative multimedia process at MediaStorm is inspiring and downright contagious! The hierarchy of the steps I’ll follow in my future projects and when re-editing past projects has permanently shifted, it’s been a workflow revolution. Thank you!
After this week, I realized yet again why it's so important to methodically first and foremost create a strong narrative. Without that, things fall apart. Working on our story, I also felt an incredible affirmation and excitement for the fact that everyone has a story, big or small. Sometimes it’s just a matter of patience to get to the nuances of the good stuff, something we all can identify with. I also love the idea of giving back to our subject, and helping to share her voice in a different way.
With the fantastic help of Tim, Rob and Brian I am also getting my mind around how shooting video requires a different thought process than shooting stills. The other day, when I was shooting stills, I realized that my mind was in video mode—that was a first for me…I laughed out loud. During the workshop, I was also reminded how huge and intricate of a task it is to make a strong piece, and how great it is to work and learn as a team, something that I rarely get to do. There’s a lot of the technical tricks I learned, but the subtleties of emotion, beat, rhythm, passion and patience are what have inspired me the most, and left me excited about making new work.