Category Archives: Photography

Report-First Open Workshop, 28 November 2009

Posted on December 4, 2009 | Leave a comment

Workshop in progress at Jacob’s Pro Lounge. Photo: Ghene Snowdon

Photography is alive and well, and talent and passion are in abundance. This is my conclusion after my first open workshop which took place at the end of November. It was kindly organised by Ghene Snowdon of Photosocialise and I’m forever thankful for the wonderful folks at Jacob’s for letting us use the Pro Lounge in their New Oxford Street branch.


The idea behind doing a one-off workshop was to see the interest from photography enthusiasts and I have to say that I was left very enthused myself. The day went superbly with an introduction of my work, lots of Q&A, a briefing and then some street photography by the attendees of the workshop. We then had a quick edit session and a projection of the collective works.
The feedback has been so great and the suggestion of a series of workshops has been made several times, that I’m pretty sure we will get together a series for 2010; watch this space! If you’d like to see more workshops, please make a comment, adding any suggestions for what subject matter would interest you.

I’d just like to share with you my favourite top five images of the day. In the end it was between two images for the top place, and you can see them below:

First Place: Harry Engels

Runner-Up: Antje Bormann

Also in top five: Carlo Nicora

Also in top five: Johan van Eck

Also in top five: Matilda Egere-Cooper

Here are, in no particular order, some comments from Twitter on the subject of the workshop; many thanks for all the kindness 🙂

“thank you for the talk. Very interesting and inspiring – look forward to the next one”

“Thanks to @terakopian for the great Workshop! “

“@terakopian well fone fella. A good workshop worth attending.”

“@terakopian excellent workshop. thank you!”

“@terakopian Also re the workshop, I’d happily have paid double. Really enjoyed it and would happily do another.”

“Back from an inspiring workshop with @terakopian. This is my achievement; as it turned out, runner up of the day: http://bit.ly/5VALHD“

“@terakopian Hey Edmund! Enjoyed today, looking forward to the next one x”

“@terakopian it was a great workshop!! well done!! so glad I came :-)”

“@terakopian thank you very much for the useful workshop! I hope you run it again (and again)!”

“@terakopian Hi Ed, great workshop on Saturday, really enjoyed it and the chance to see other people’s take on street photography.”

Finally, a couple of blog posts regarding the workshop:


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Posted in News, Photography

Canon Boy & Nikon Girl – True Love?!

Posted on November 24, 2009 | Leave a comment

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Posted in Photography

ABC News’ Person of the Week

Posted on November 21, 2009 | Leave a comment


Conservation Through Photographing Decline

Daniel Beltra, a photographer who has dedicated his career to documenting the inhumanity of man to his surrounds has been named by ABC News as their “Person of the Week”. There’s an excellent video showing just why this accolade has been afforded Beltra; to see the it, please click the link at the top of this article.

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Posted in News, Photography

What Would You Do If You Won The Lottery?

Posted on November 6, 2009 | Leave a comment

It’s a question often asked by people. Sometimes the answers are more predictable but occasionally they are completely unique and full of character. To mark the 15th anniversary of the National Lottery, I had the pleasure of photographing 15 lottery winners who have spent some of their winnings on the quirky to the life-changing. Its been a fascinating journey that has taken me all over England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and all the way to Canada. The shooting of the project took around five months, sometimes spending days getting to location. Its been an absolute joy to do, and I’d just like to send a big thanks to all who helped from the Camelot press office, and the kindness and patience shown by all my photographic subjects.


Meredith Davies from Carmarthenshire won £2,069,730 in October 2004. He set up a stud farm with around 25 Welsh Cobb ponies for £100,000. Photographed with his partner Kate Chester.

The project will be exhibited at the Fulham Palace Gallery from November 14 to 22 (check the gallery’s opening hours, on their web site). The exhibition is spread across two huge rooms with some of the images being printed by Metro Imaging to over 2 meters across. Its going to be well worth seeing.

Technically speaking, I decided to carry identical kit to all the shoots. This would help keep the same flavour across the shots. I packed everything into a ThinkTank Photo Airport International, including a Change-Up and Skins pouches to use when on location. Camera kit consisted of two Canon 5D MkII bodies (5D for the first shoot as I didn’t have the Mark II yet!). Lenses were the Canon 15mm f2.8, 16-35mm f2.8L II, 35mm f1.4L, 85mm f1.2L II and the 70-200mm f4L IS. Looking through the images, it looks like my favoured lenses were the 16-35mm and 85mm.

Sue & Peter Busby from East Yorkshire won £1,660,769 as part of the Tesco syndicate who scooped £18,268,465 in July 2005. They purchased a luxury, top of the range Lunar caravan for £14,500. With their dog Jasper by the shore of Derwentwater, Northern Lake District. Keswick Camping and Caravanning Club Site, Keswick, Cumbria.

The many thousands of RAW images, occupying many gigabytes of storage were backed up across several drives, including the brilliant Sonnet Fusion D800 and in the ‘cloud’, giving me peace of mind. All the editing, captioning, colour corrections, raw conversions and output were done on Apple’s Aperture and finishing touches added on Nik Software’s Viveza and Sharpner Pro 3.0. The ultimate compliment came from master printer John Cleur at Metro Imaging when he said that the files looked great and needed very little work done to them before printing!

Thea Bristow, who won £15 million in July 2004, features in this landmark exhibition and is pictured flying over her 13-acres of woodland – a purchase which meant the land was saved from housing development. Over 300 new trees have been planted and a walkway built through the woodland before it is opened up for the public to enjoy.

So, don’t forget to check out the exhibition from November 14 to 22 at Fulham Palace Gallery, Fulham Palace, Bishop’s Avenue, London, SW6 6EA.

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Posted in Exhibition, News, Photography, Pictures

First Open Workshop

Posted on October 21, 2009 | Leave a comment

A montage of images of me at work, ranging from 1994 to 2009

I’ll be having my first ever open workshop on November 28th, 2009. The general themes will be photojournalism and street photography. It’s going to be most suited to intermediate and advanced photographers, both amateur and professional. Although having done many workshops, lectures and presentations in the UK and abroad, this is the first ever open one, meaning anyone can book and pop along.


Part of the workshop is also a portfolio review, so if you think your work might benefit from some one to one attention, you can also book this.
I’ll be showing some work from my 20 year career as a press photographer, answering any questions you may have and then getting down to the actual workshop, so make sure your batteries are charged and your cameras ready!

The business and booking side of things is being dealt by Ghene Snowdon, so visit the Photosocialise site to make bookings.
As it’s a first and there’s a recession, we’ve decided to keep it mega cheap. These prices will definitely never be repeated again, so if you’re interested, do make a booking sharpish – places are limited and are booking up already!

To see a report from the workshop, click HERE.

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Posted in Camera Equipment, Computers and Software, News, Photography, Pictures, workshop

Kew’s Seed Bank Hits 24,200 Species

Posted on October 16, 2009 | Leave a comment
Kew Seed Bank 2009 – Images by Edmond Terakopian


Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank partnership celebrates banking its 24,200th species, a Yunnan banana seed – a pink wild banana from China which is an important staple for wild Asian elephants (Musa itinerans). Royal Botanical Gardens Kew is celebrating collecting, banking and conserving 10% of the world’s wild plant species. Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank, Wakehurst Place, East Sussex. The seed is banked inside the vault which is kept at minus twenty degrees centigrade.

Must admit, I thoroughly enjoyed this assignment. Its astonishing to see the size of the project and how much has been achieved already. It still leaves 90% to be collected though, so visit their web site and see if you can help out.

At work with my 5D MkIIs and Think Tank Photo bag and pouches

Photographically speaking, I took a couple of Canon 5D MkII bodies and mostly used the 15mm f2.8 Fisheye, 16-35mm f2.8L II, 35mm f1.4L, 50mm f2.5 Macro and the 85mm f1.2L II.
What really surprised me was how well the cameras and lenses behaved, but more so the batteries; I was going from minus 20 degrees centigrade (which reached minus 30 near the coolers because of the wind chill) to hot and humid greenhouses and then back again to the arctic temperatures. After having shot over 1000 RAWs, both cameras’ batteries showed full power! Astonishing.

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Posted in Photography, Pictures