LPA Student Challenge winner Andrei Nacu recently spent some time at the LPA offices, receiving some vital advice on how best to present his portfolio from Lisa and the rest of the LPA team. We caught up with him last week and here is what he had to say.
© Andrei Nacu
Tell us about what you are doing at the moment Andrei?
I have just finished my MA degree in Documentary Photography at University of Wales, Newport. For my final project I have produced a photobook about my parents so I’m looking for ways in which I can improve this work and maybe self-publish it. Besides this, I’m at the stage where I’m trying to put everything together for a project that I have developed over the last year, about small family farms in South Wales. My main reason for looking at this subject in the UK was the accelerated decrease in the number of small farms which have almost halved. More and more farmers are struggling to survive as they cannot keep up with factory farming and the changing economy.
© Andrei Nacu
© Andrei Nacu
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With the deadline fast approaching to the final of the LPA Student Challenges, we recently caught up with one of last year’s winners Rameez Khawaja, who spent a day at LPA. Here is what Rameez said about his day with the LPA team and his portfolio masterclass.
Can you tell us a bit about what you’re doing at the moment Rameez?
At the moment I’m on a placement year from my university, Huddersfield (Digital Photography BA Hons). I’ve decided to use this year to invest in myself and get more experience before going on to finish my degree. I have several personal projects that I am developing and also juggling working at RM Studios, which primarily focuses on wedding and commercial photography. I do have my hands full but sometimes my whole schedule can get a little unstructured at times!
© Rameez Khawaja
Beautiful and honest images from Rameez’s project in the Amazon rainforest
Tell us a bit about your LPA portfolio experience day.
My portfolio day with the LPA team was better than I could have imagined. I met Alexa & Tom in the morning at a portfolio appointment in West London and subsequently had my work critiqued by Lisa who has years of experience in the commercial industry. It was incredible and I walked away with a mountain of information that wasn’t only just informative but I can put to use in my practice in the here and now.
What surprised me the most was the transparency of the agency staff when I started badgering them with questions! As photographers there’s a lot of competition now more than ever and most of the time there’s a blackbox of information that not a lot of working photographers unfortunately share with those starting off. So it was almost too easy getting a simple and honest response to most of my questions that usually get avoided by others.
Did you find out any useful information you didn’t already know?
Finding out how briefs are put together and discussed/negotiated with clients was something I had no experience of at all in. It’s definitely something I will now look at incorporating into my own work in the future and expecting from clients.
In all honesty I didn’t know what to expect when I was thinking about the agency appointment, but it was above and beyond what I would even have thought of.
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