Personal Projects: Five Things I Learned at Lensfest 2024

8 Jul

10 women, 10 cameras, 1 gondola ride, 1 underwater photoshoot, 1 sunset boat trip on the Doura (with 2 pole dances), 1 champagne spray photoshoot, 1 street photography photoshoot, 1 lost phone, 1 windy and wobbly beach excursion, 1 amazing but sweaty bookshop, sunshine, sangrias, beautiful tiled buildings, hundreds of belly laughs, new friends and old friends, mucho learning and loads of memories banked. It’s been an absolute beauty 🇵🇹📸😍👸🏼🪩👯‍♀️

This year’s Lens Eleven LensFest was held in Porto, Portugal. On 4 July, ten female photographers congregated at the BN Apartments, Carregal, to learn, chat, renew friendships and have fun. Here are my five reflections on what was a magical few days being part of THE best community.

There is no replacement for face-to-face interactions in a learning environment if you want practical exercises to accelerate knowledge. We photographed street, slow shutter, underwater and sunset scenarios. There were varying amounts of experience in the group, but working together to give hands-on advice not only supercharged the efforts of those learning but strengthened fledging friendships and produced mega results!
When you get a group of likeminded women together, the sky is the limit. We belly laughed, we talked career and families, we marvelled at everyone’s willingness to share their experiences (and loved the complete lack of ego or one-upmanship), and we took so many beautiful images. Old friends reconnected and new friendships were made.
While skills and knowledge can be taught and learned, the way we see things is different through every lens. It’s been fascinating to see how we framed our compositions differently, and what we focused on, and what we felt drawn to individually. Kind of like life really :)
Being a successful content creator is so much more than being an ‘influencer’. There seems to be a degree of snobbery around the latter and personally I feel I have a much better understanding of the breadth of what it entails now, not to mention the amount of work that goes into it. Some traditional marketers and comms folk might not like it (notice the word some, I’m not generalising!) but the fact is that it works for many people and brands, and involves a raft of skills.
Porto is epic! It had somehow gone under the radar for me, but I’m so glad I’ve seen it and I’ll definitely be going back. It’s a beautiful city with the perfect blend of old and new, and its unbelievable tiled walls are the stuff of photography dreams.