Marc Provins

Once a year we take the photography first year students on a residential to London for three days. It's both exhilarating and exhausting in equal measure for all concerned. The staff as they are on duty for 72 hours and responsible for a large group of teenagers, and the students as they are mostly unused to much physical exercise and have to walk miles each day, exploring and photographing the city.  Everything went well this year, great weather and light, interesting exhibitions including Alec Soth at The Media Space and happy, respectful students. As group leader I don't get much photography time so I'm largely grabbing moments as we move en masse around the streets of London, but I now see that as the challenge. Sadly there were no pea soup fogs, but I love the poetic description of pollution and the reason London became known as the Big Smoke.  Here are some London residential blog posts from previous years: Dorothy Rides the Piccadilly Line K...

I've had such an intense week, really glad its done with. We had an inspection at college this week which at the risk of sounding like a moany teacher is incredibly stressful as its essentially like waiting for a job interview all day, every day for five days. However it went to plan and we got a pat on the back. So I got home today and was just lying on the sofa feeling hard done by when I got an email pop through on the iPad from Joel Meyerowitz!! For the non photographers he's one of the most famous and influential photographers in the world. Originally famous for iconic street photographs of New York in the 1960's and 70's, later know for his large format pictures of Ground Zero just after 9/11. I should point out that he wasn't cold calling, I had emailed him about a blog entry I made in response to his work: http://www.marcprovins.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/meyerowitz-made-me-do-it.html However I was just amazed that he took the time to respond and so genero...