By Mary Ann Alwan
An extraordinary event happened over the last couple days at the Big Shots event in Waltham. About 100 students and faculty were treated on Wednesday night to an entertaining and inspiring talk by the renowned photographer/artist Michel Tcherevkoff. For three-plus hours, Michel, as he encourages his new CDIA friends to call him, took us on a visual journey of his career’s work. To start, he showed us interesting composites and creations he made for commercial advertising clients early in his career — all done without the help of today’s digital tools. He finished with a showcase of his current, more intricate and Photoshop-assisted artwork featuring flowers which he bends and arranges into fashionable shoes, lingerie, and butterflies.
For an encore, Michel invited interested students to return to Studio C the following morning for portfolio critiques. Again for three-plus hours, Michel helped about 15 of us look at our own work through the lens of his creative genius. Michel offered up nice helpings of “nice work” and “I like it”, but he also showed each of us, very specifically, how we could have composed better, or lit our subjects better, or waited for better moments.
Watching Michel give the critiques was so interesting. It gave me a glimpse of what it must be like when he’s working on one of his stunning creations. For starters, he’s clearly tireless — tireless in the way he wanted each one of us to see how we could produce better work, how we can still move forward on photographs we might have thought were finished. Next, being the fine craftsman that he is, Michel encouraged us to seek a higher plane of technique — something I imagine he does with his own work routinely.
The two sessions were not just all about looking at photographs, though. Michel weaved in plenty of excellent advice. Here is what he said that resonated the most with me:
Seek out purposeful assistantships. How many times have we had someone recommend to us “go be an assistant” upon graduation?
Michel expanded upon that common advice like no one that I have heard put it before. He suggested that we strategically seek out assistantships with a variety of photographers in a purposeful effort to round out our skill set: a location photographer to learn how to improvise and deal with new situations; a fashion/beauty photographer to learn how to direct and build a relationship with people; a still life photographer to learn the best light; and a photojournalist to learn how to record, not necessarily create.
Have a 10 year plan. Know where you want to be in 10 years, and evaluate every decision along the way in terms of whether it will better position you to be where you want to be in 10 years.
Follow your heart. Do something you’re passionate about, even if you don’t see the commercial outlet for it right away. Your passion will show through, and possibilities you may not have thought of may unfold from there.
If you want to be creative, train your brain to be creative. He tells how he would look at each day’s newspaper headline and challenge himself to say the same thing in pictures.
Lastly, I will add something I’m taking away from this experience that Michel did not say outright, but his actions in coming to CDIA shouted it: be generous and enthusiastic back to this industry. Michel Tcherevkoff came to CDIA under an interesting set of circumstances. Those of you lucky enough to have Rob Van Petten as your portfolio module teacher know that Rob likes to collect names of favorite photographers from each of his students because he contacts them for portfolio advice which he then shares with the class — that is, if he gets a response. When I suggested Michel Tcherevkoff on my turn in class, Rob and I exchanged a quick look of “longshot”, but he agreed to give it a go. To our surprise, Michel wrote back right away and suggested a conference call with the class in lieu of a written response to Rob’s standard portfolio questions. My class spent an hour on the phone with Michel this past winter, which then evolved into his coming here this week to talk to the whole school. Generous and enthusiastic in sharing what he knows and wanting us to become better photographers — that was the spirit of Michel Tcherevkoff’s initial call with us and this visit.
Oh, and one more thing — I am also taking away from this experience a new appreciation for all the skills my instructors have taught us over the last 18 months. Listening to Michel give the critiques was, at times, like being back in class. “Take multiple exposures and then blend them together” — that was from Interiors. “Adjust the exposure in Photoshop for your background and mask out your subject” — that’s Photoshop I and II. “Your lighting needs more/less shadow” — that’s Intro to Studio Lighting. All these things that, at times, seemed so basic and a bit tedious are so clearly very important going forward. So “thanks” to all the CDIA teachers, and a big “thanks” to Rob for setting up this very special visit with Michel Tcherevkoff. It was truly a memorable experience.
