Guest Lecture: Laura McCluskey

Photography had been a strong interest of Laura's since year 11, photographing her baby sister at the time for her high school project. From photographing her sister since birth it became an individual project of hers to photograph her sister Grace as she grew up. 

Laura studied at UCA Epsom and graduated in 2010. Since graduating Laura worked as a freelancer photographing weddings, as well as photographing for other clients and publications such as The Guardian, Primark and many more. 

A project that Laura has been working on since 2008 is something that she would like to continue during her photographic practice. Dreamland is based around her growing up in Kent and meeting the types of people that she did due to moving around a lot whilst she was growing up. Laura's documentary style for Dreamland was influenced by photographers like William Eggleston and Robert Frank. She'd always known that she was more of a documentary photographer.

She assisted photographer Suki Dhanda and commented on how much she enjoyed working with her. Laura cited that when looking to assist, find a photographer whose work interests you and follows a similar style to your own. 

Laura and Suki soon became close friends which affected the work they were creating during shoots, therefore Laura decided it was best to set off alone. This lead her to freelance as a wedding photographer. 

At first she found it quite daunting, wondering off alone into the photography world without having that partner to work alongside with. What she enjoyed about this was how she was able to present her own style within her weddings and clients liked it.

To this day she does not work so much as a wedding photographer and earns her money more so through commissioned work. Primark were intrigued by her soft images she'd created for her Pylot magazine and felt it would work with their pyjamas advertisement with Disney.

Laura has always enjoyed working with children and was given the opportunity to do so with Young Hackney Photographers which involved Laura teaching the younger generation how to use cameras. Working with children, Laura had a campaign commission with The Children Society. Under the name of Exploitation the subject matter focuses on issues faced by young people in the UK. Even though the young people being photographed were actually models, it admired Laura deeply into the subject matters as she had to do her research in order to know how to approach the subject matter. A question was asked during lecture whether she was interested in making moving image and she answered yes. She would like to create moving image based on The Children Society as she was surprised there wasn't a movie made about it already.

Working intuitively discussed by Laura as she went on to tell us how to approach strangers when wanting to take their photo... For example she would normally be very brief about her plans for the photo and leave details with the person being photographed so that they can go back and view the image for themselves. I found this most helpful as in the past when I've wanted to photograph strangers I have found it most difficult, especially when the majority say no. Younger people aged under 16 can become trickier so signatures would be needed or perhaps a contact number for a parent or guardian to confirm the photo. 

Overall Laura much prefers working in the ambient light as she likes to capture it in the moment, and the same goes for editing which she may only tweak slightly if necessary. She doesn't believe in changing ones size or hair colour, but perhaps the odd spot on the face which normally wouldn't be there. She likes to capture a person for who they are. Identity is a big thing to Laura and she considers it throughout all her shoots with the different people that she meets and photographs along her journey through photography. 

Most of the time she prefers to shoot in medium format on her Pentax 67 film camera. She will use digital when photographing weddings but with her fashion and portrait practice she describes film to have this texture that digital can't compare with, and I certainly agree with her.

Laura's lecture has by far been my favourite since the very first lecture I attended.