Mentoring Programme Details

You will meet with your mentors (a leading photographer and respected picture editor) for 5-6 sessions over the course of 2 months. The programme will begin from the 25th of July 2011.
Your team will set the meeting times based on your combined schedules. The final project must be completed by 12 September 2011.
You will be required to identify a subject based on the given theme (click here for the "Energy" brief). Once you've selected your subject, our mentors will help to narrow down your brief.
Outside of meeting with your mentors, you will be required to photograph this subject and deliver a minimum of 3 images and a short essay of no more than 300 words.
Your team will also be responsible for documenting the mentoring process.

London Reportage team:

Picture Editor: Sophie Batterbury Independent on Sunday
Photographer: Justin Sutcliffe

London Fashion / Portraiture team:

Picture Editor: Sharon O’Neill Sunday Times Style Magazine
Photographer: John Wright

Glasgow team:

Picture Editor: Elaine Livingstone Opus Media — formerly of Sunday Herald
Photographer: Claire Stuart

We are awarding prizes for the best mentoring projects:

Best in Show:
The photographer with the best overall project will receive a £500 voucher from Metro Imaging (redeemable on any of their services including retouching, printing, processing, etc) and he / she will get the opportunity to be mentored by Metro. This mentoring support programme will help to further the winner's future career opportunities through introductions to targeted industry professionals, regular work reviews, and guidance in production and professional practice.

Best Fashion / Portraiture Award:
The photographer with the strongest fashion/portraiture project will receive Bowens’ Gemini 500Ws Classic Kit lighting system (valued at £845).
The project and your work will be promoted in the press.
You will have work exhibited in the Mentoring Programme group show in London and New York. The work will also appear on the YPA site.
Work will be featured in an exhibit and on the YPA website. (The work from the 2010 Mentoring Programme was exhibited in New York in January of this year.)
You will learn from a leading photographer and picture editor.
You will get the opportunity to network with industry leaders.
You will be able to create some great work for your portfolio.
You can add the experience to your CV to add more depth to your professional experience.

You'll need to submit an application. Apply here.
You will need to upload 5-10 of your best images for the application. We are not expecting these to reflect our mentoring theme—they should simply be representative of your work.
You will also need to give us some really rough ideas on how you might approach the brief. You will not be restricted to the ideas you propose here. We are only looking for a couple of sentences to get an idea of your creativity / approach.
Submitting an application is no guarantee of acceptance. We are selecting candidates based on the quality of work, the creativity of your possible approach, as well as your location (ie. the ability for YPA to find and secure mentors in your area).
You will be notified about the status of your application no later than 18th July 2011.

Mentoring Programme details