PARIS CLOSE-UPS, Guest Post by Kathryn Mohrman

My friend, Kathryn Mohrman, an avid and excellent photographer, went to Paris recently.  She has graciously agreed to share some of her photos and impressions of her trip. Kathryn is a professor at Arizona State University and travels widely for her job as director of several projects with partner universities in China and Vietnam. You can see photos from her trips to Morocco, Lalibela, Ethiopia, and Turkey elsewhere on this blog.  I have known Kathryn since we were students together at Grinnell College in Iowa. Here is her report: 

My most recent adventure was another photo workshop, New Year’s in Paris. What could be better than that! The focus was on street photography—every picture had to have a person in it. Our instructor, an experienced news photographer with dozens of Newsweek cover photos to his credit, pushed us to use a wide-angle lens and get close to people, get closer to people, get even closer! You can see the results of our class at http://www.peterturnley.com/student-galleries/paris-2015-new-years It was inspiring to be with terrific photographers who challenged me to look differently…and get closer.

Note: I asked Kathryn why she chose to shoot her pictures in black and white.  Here is her answer: "I chose to do B&W (as did most of the eight students in the workshop) because the instructor shoots only in B&W.  It was street photography, every photo had to include humans, so akin to photojournalism. We were told to shoot at 20-35mm, so wide angle--no sneaking pictures with a telephoto!  Shooting in B&W was also a challenge for myself, because B&W photos require more attention to composition and contrast--no color to attract the viewer."