BIRMINGHAM PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL

The first of its kind, the Birmingham Photography Festival will showcase a range of talent. Organised by the creative photography trio, Fraser McGee, Beth Astington and Martin O’Callaghan, the team behind IGERS Birmingham have championed both amateur and professional photography in the city through sharing images, organising events and workshops for photographers, and creating a community of like-minded individuals with a passion for photography. Now, with the Birmingham Photography Festival, the team will do that and much more.

Why did you want to put the festival together?

Beth: The three of us know each other because we’ve been running IGERS Birmingham and as part of that we put on events and workshops for photographers where we go and take photos. But it’s mainly that we go and take photos and post them online. So we thought ‘what else can we do?’ and decided we’d do a one-day event.

Fraser: We’ve done a lot to promote photography, the events are open to all and with the festival ,we want to provide a forum for national, well-known photographers and discuss their work and life as a community.

Beth: We then thought let’s make it interactive as well with a speed presentation event; people have 5 minutes and 3 slides each and they can talk about whatever they want in photography. I think that’s going to be quite interesting because one of our most important themes is that it’s about photography and community.

Martin: It’s different to a Camera Club, it’s more interactive for the photography community.

Beth: There were a few places that I would say were quite highbrow events and personally that’s not always what people want to attend, so the speakers are high quality speakers but it’s presented in a more accessible way, it’s for a mix of people from professional to amateur.

Martin: It’s broader, rather than focussing on Instagram like IGERS does. It’s focussing on the photography first.

Beth: With the panel discussion we’ve got people from all four of the big disciplines like street photography, landscape, architectural and then urban landscapes. We felt that was really good, as they’ll have different things to say and talk about different things. Mostly they’ll be people known to Birmingham so that people aren’t afraid to ask questions.

Fraser: That’s one of the good things about Birmingham, there are a lot of people like us who are kind of getting on and just doing things in the city, often off their own back, and that’s a good sign in how the city is making things happen creatively. There’s a real rise in entrepreneurship.

What’s it been like putting it together?

Fraser: I don’t want to jinx it but I wanna say it’s been good.

Beth: I think the experience we all have and what we bring to it helps. We are experienced in putting together events and we all have photography knowledge, so far its been interesting.

Martin: You live and breathe this stuff which is what makes it exciting and because it’s our passion it’s not difficult it’s easy and even though we’re doing hard work we enjoy it.

Fraser: I think we were a bit nervous though because we’ve never charged for our own event before and we weren’t sure how people would react. Anything IGERS does is free and so this is the first time we were going to try it under a new brand but we sold the first 50 tickets in the first an hour. Then we originally had a limit of 100, trying not to be too ambitious, and those were gone in a few days, so we’ve even ended up moving to a bigger space.

Martin: It surprised us. We just thought we needed to cover our costs but then in three days ,our original projection was beaten.

Fraser: We tried to keep it as price friendly as possible so everyone could come and I think we’ve achieved that. It was even something our speakers commended us on as well as our supporters. Okay ,it’s the first year we’ve done it, but we hope it grows.

Would you do a second event?

Martin: I’m already thinking about a second one.

Beth: Unless this is an absolute disaster I think we’ll definitely do a second one.

Martin: With the response we’ve had so far, which has been so positive, we could even run something over 2 days next time.

So you run IGERS Birmingham. Would you say that there’s strength in number when it comes to photography ?
Fraser: One of the things I think is really good about IGERS events is that you put a load of people in one space and then take a picture of the same thing but one person would come up with a different perspective to someone else, and as a way of documenting the city, it can be quite diverse.

Martin: Generally with photography you go out on your own, but I didn’t become a full time photographer until I started going to IGERS events. As a collective you learn from each other.

Beth: Most photographers will be going on their own. Those who come to the meets, on the surface, will have nothing in common, they’ll be in completely different kinds of jobs, students or retired, younger, older but they have photography.

Fraser: We’ve had people come to these IGERS events who have found that photography has helped their mental health. We’ve seen it at the IGERS events, some people who literally turn up to take photos and then leave will stay a little bit longer with each session and start to get to know us and become part of the community.

Martin: It’s amazing to see.

Fraser: I think a way to see it is that if we get more people interested in photography that’s great for the industry. They might buy a camera and then start hanging out in Birmingham more and then that’s also great for the city. There was a time when Birmingham underwent a sort of lull and now we’re going back to people wanting good imagery.

Beth: We have an array of people and we’re all-encompassing. We literally have people using their phones or just using the auto-setting on their new camera right up to people that know how to use every setting. People learn from each other and there’s a lot of discussion about how to take the shot and what to use.

Martin: We’ve broken photography stereotypes.

The photography festival is on the 20th of October at the Birmingham & Midland Institute. You can get tickets here.

Eleanor Forrest