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Category Archives: Conceptual

THE TRIAL – Calendar UK – Gold Medal – Prix de la Photographie Paris 2012

July 10, 2012 – 16:04

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WINNER OF PX3, Prix de la Photographie Paris

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We are very happy to announce that our calendar THE TRIAL have been Awarded First Prize – Gold medal in category Advertising at “Prix de la Photographie Paris 2012”.
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The jury selected PX3 2012’s winners from thousands of photography entries from over 85 countries.

The exhibition opens on Tuesday 10th of JULY at Espace Dupont Gallery, Paris.

Many thanks to all those involved!
Jaroslav
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Please check out “THE TRIAL” our conceptual shoot for a trade calendar HERE >>>

For Behind The Scenes video and to see how it was done please click HERE >>>
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ABOUT Px3:
Px3 is juried by top international decision-makers in the photography industry: Carol Johnson, Curator of Photography of Library of Congress, Washington D.C.; Gilles Raynaldy, Director of Purpose, Paris; Viviene Esders, Expert près la Cour d’Appel de Paris; Mark Heflin, Director of American Illustration + American Photography, New York; Sara Rumens, Lifestyle Photo Editor of Grazia Magazine, London; Françoise Paviot, Director of Galerie Françoise Paviot, Paris; Chrisitine Ollier, Art Director of Filles du Calvaire, Paris; Natalie Johnson, Features Editor of Digital Photographer Magazine, London; Natalie Belayche, Director of Visual Delight, Paris; Kenan Aktulun, VP/Creative Director of Digitas, New York; Chiara Mariani, Photo Editor of Corriere della Sera Magazine, Italy; Arnaud Adida, Director of Acte 2 Gallery/Agency, Paris; Jeannette Mariani, Director of 13 Sévigné Gallery, Paris; Bernard Utudjian, Director of Galerie Polaris, Paris; Agnès Voltz, Director of Chambre Avec Vues, Paris; and Alice Gabriner, World Picture Editor of Time Magazine, New York.

Cheers
Jaroslav
www.AurumLight.com
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By Aurum Light | Also posted in Editorial | Tagged Aurum Light, Award, Gold Medal, Jaroslav Wieczorkiewicz, Prix de la Photographie Paris, The Trial | Comments (9)

“JAY vs JAY” Teaser!

March 20, 2012 – 12:10

Hi there!

We are quite busy at the moment so today just a quick and little Teaser of the recent project called “Jay vs Jay”!

AWAKENING – PART II – Building Your Team

March 9, 2012 – 13:05

And we are back with our Photo-Quest – the Awakening!
Recently slowed down because of the winter weather outside but in full speed at the moment and taking our prep work to another level.

Building your Team!

That stage is particularly important!

So, Is photography, a game for a lonely wolfs?
… well, maybe in some cases. But the kind we do definitely require an extra effort!

Let me picture it for you:

You might be a good photographer, really great! …but there are many great not only photographers but visionaries out there.
Exactly like sports athletes… and all of you are starting the same race.

You might be much better than anyone else on the track, so from the start you are leading the race… but after first 400meters all guys who you left behind are passing the baton to their team mates… and all of the sudden, now you are just trying to keep up…
After another 400m another switch and after that again…

The race is lost, even though there is still a great deal of honour in finishing eventually…

I think you know what I mean.
You can be really strong in what you do, but it is hell of a hard to lead the game which was set for a group.

The Team

My approach was to build a solid group of professionals that together can take on board a really complex conceptual work.

The size of our team depends on assignment, and almost any location shooting is “eating” the human resources really fast.
But no matter what the job might be – small or big scale – for the win we keep exactly the same core of the group on each assignment and increase the number of assistants if needed.

You might ask, why does it matter? MUA is a MUA and VAL is a VAL…

I would say that this is absolutely essential!

I treat the creative process like a great adventure… something like climbing another mountain…
When the Goal is set, it is the Journey what counts and how you will get to your destination point!

If your challenge is uncertain, you really want to explore it with the people that you easily communicate with, really trust and willing to clip to the same rope while hanging over the edge…

The Team make the difference but Consistency is gold!

Like a really good looking hand writing. Each team member has a significant role in keeping your hand writing i.e. the “look” of your work consistent.
Change one piece in that puzzle and you will have a different effect every time.
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OK, that being said so, what is happening in Awakening

It is the time to let go a bit and hand out part of the tasks.
When the Storyboard is fixed, and we are starting work on the characters design, I like to brainstorm our options.

Each character carefully designed with a series of sketches which are now handed out to the team.
That part is a very specific to my workflow when working on personal project or with clients.

I really find the mood-boards misleading, especially on a very early stage – you are simply sending out too much information and the essential parts are getting lost in the ambient noise of selected images.

When sketches are done Katrina who is doing amazing things with hair and makeup and Sophie the costume designer will have some time to come up with their conclusions.
Summary of our thoughts is what we are going to present to the client before we go to another stage.

When all that is done, we can move on…

To Be Continued……

Cheers
Jaroslav

www.AurumLight.com
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AWAKENING – PART II – Building Your Team

AWAKENING – PART I – Finding Your Anchor Point

AWAKENING – PROLOGUE – Seeing beyond the obvious…

AWAKENING – THE PHOTO-QUEST with AurumLight Team

By Aurum Light | Also posted in The Quest - Awakening | Comments (3)

Milk Workshops Australia 2011 – Summary

January 9, 2012 – 11:50

So we did a splash in Oz !

What a great finish to 2011, indeed!
After a couple of weeks of preparation, and Jeff’s great effort at the other end we managed to organise two amazing events in Melbourne and Sydney.

We left cloudy London and was welcomed by sunny Melbourne and around 20 degrees more generous weather than in Europe at the time.
My sneaky plan to cheat the jet lag was almost 100% successful, almost screwed by Singapore a plane incident but even with that delay I adjusted so quickly that I didn’t feel that time difference almost at all!

Australia!
Man if that would be a Travel Photo Blog I would have plenty of great stories to tell, but it is not, so I will just quickly mention the amazing people and unique nature really making that part of the world special.

Getting back to the main topic – regular readers know the drill, though!
I always run two full demo shoots and then participants are taking over!

… using approach from our Silver Angel Illustration, we undressed Kaye from the Milky Gown!
[Click to Enlarge]

So how was it:

Day 1 – Lots of Milk throwing, crazy concepts , hyped participants, two awesome models and great crew!
8h hours of pure creativity and hard work, there was as always a lot of one-2-one time and as usual we were finishing before the scheduled time.
You might expect that when you are done, you will get quite a lot of questions, chit chats etc..
But I tell you this – after all that, everyone was excited but tired as a racing horse…

So very outnumbered we went for a cool dinner and then we took off to prepare DVD’s with the materials for the equally intense Day 2!

Day 2 – Those who had 8hours sleep were the lucky ones as that was a mind bending day!

I always stress about the different conceptual part of the workshop from the know-how bit!
You are always forced to work hard while working with the liquid – using or not our workflow and formulas… but what I always hope is that I managed to send the info across the room that the special magic is happening before you entered the studio!

I showed how I work, I was transparent as possible on how I develop my concepts and working with my team!
But foremost I trust I was inspiring!

Last but not least I would love to thank those few who made all that possible:

To Jeff Paine from Shutterclass Studio – who put in all that a lot hours of great work and organised the whole Australia venture!
If you are around Victoria and you are after a great studio Jeff is your man! Cheers for all that.

To Colin Smith and the team at Paul C Buff Australia – for providing great gear for both events with my favourites Einsteins E640 and for great discount vouchers to all participants for all PCB equipment! Much appreciated!

To our great models and makeup artist – it wouldn’t be possible without your extra effort.
To all participants for your amazing attitude an willingness to make cool stuff!

And last but not least to Ola who made my whole trip run so smooth – organising all the flights and connections so I was never late and fully equipped!
I would go astray without you! For sure!

We have also some BTS material to show you – Melbourne + Sydney:

[Photos by Jeff Paine – Click to Enlarge]

MILK WORKSHOPS 2012

…if you are still reading you might be interested in what is coming soon!

2011 was a real roller coaster for us and I am sure that 2012 will bring more exciting stuff!
As soon I finish that post We are coming back to the final stage of Awakening Photo Quest, as we are not far from the shooting day!

So for starters I am very pleased to announce our Milk Workshops plans for 2012!
If you happen to be in one of the cities listed below and you were thinking about attending our workshops please email us at workshops@aurumlight.com and put the name of the city in the title line.
As soon as we secure the date you will receive a newsletter with all the booking info:

Beijing, China
London, UK
Frankfurt, Germany,
Rome, Italy
Los Angeles, USA

…and it looks like we will finish the year again in the sunny Oz visiting:
Melbourne
Sydney
and Brisbane!

Hope to see you there!
Jaroslav

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You might also like:

Playing with water: THE SILVER ANGEL !
The Milky Nun !
MILK WORKSHOP – June Edition SUMMARY
MILK WORKSHOP in London

By Aurum Light | Also posted in Graphics, Liquids, Milk, Workshops & Events | Tagged AurumLight Team, Australia, Conceptual Photography, Einstein E640, Jaroslav Wieczorkiewicz, Liquid, Milk Workshops, Paul C Buff, ShutterClass | Comments (16)

THE TRIAL – How was it done?

December 15, 2011 – 02:27

The Trial – Calendar – Behind The Scenes

After publishing photographs from The Trial [ Click for Photos ], our recent conceptual shoot, I’ve received a lot of emails asking ”How was it done?” and “How on earth we managed to convince over 50 models to take part in the project!”

I will be more than happy to answer, but first I would like to thank you all for your messages and kind words, I really appreciate them all!

OK, So let’s get straight to the point!

Working around your limitation is what photography is all about really.

“Do you need a big budget to do big things..?”
– I don’t think so!

What matters is thinking outside the box and always willing to go the extra mile!

The Courtroom scene was the most challenging illustration.
We had no budget to hire over 50 models or the full house of lighting gear…

So instead I decided to Shoot in Sections.

I have prepared a little animation to give you a full understanding of what this involved:

The camera – Phase One!

For this kind of work, you want to have something which will justify the scale of your project.
And I knew I wanted the best possible output!

I decided to try the Phase One camera system, and to say that I am thrilled with the quality of the final images is not enough.
I worked with P65+ Digital Back and I think that the resolution, quality and level of noise is just superb.
When your focus is in place you will get an extraordinary level of details and – to paraphrase my friend Drew – “the Angels sing!”

And that illustration when printed at almost 2m wide paper is just breathtaking!

[To Enlarge please click on the photo]

Now with the introduction of the new model – Phase One IQ180 Digital Back with over 80MP, and extraordinary quality and detail – they just rewrite the standards!

I hope to put my hands on the beast soon enough to shoot with it my new project – Awakening!

The Setup: Gitzo + Manfrotto

If you can manage to keep your camera locked dead tight on the tripod and keep the lighting consistent – it allows you to multiply not only models but also the lighting setups!

When working with such a camera – and the medium format is not a small body – and large groups of talents + team on the day , there are so many things around you that the least important thing to worry about is to secure the consistent output – you want to be sure that the rig keeps the frames identical.
For that you need to go for the sturdiest tripod which you can get.

We worked with Gitzo GT5660SCT Giant Tripod with a fantastic Manfrotto 405 Geared Head which allows for an absolute fine detail camera position adjustments.

To make sure you will not move anything while shooting – we tethered and operated the camera from a laptop via Phase One, Capture One software.

After all that… it is just as simple as layering final frames in Photoshop!

And other than that, there was almost no postproduction on the images.
You gotta love it, when it is all done in Camera!

Oh, and if you missed my previous post here is the complete Behind The Scenes Video from The Trial and the final photographs you can find here [click]:

Cheers
Jaroslav
www.AurumLight.com

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PART 1: THE TRIAL by AurumLight Studio

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*** Workshops ***

MILK Workshops in AUSTRALIA 2013!
Book youplace nowhere: >>>BOOKING PAGE

BRISBANE Nov 23-24 2013
MELBOURNE Nov 27-28 2013
SYDNEY Nov 30-Dec 1 2013

My best regards
Jaroslav

By Aurum Light | Also posted in Editorial, Location, Models | Tagged Aurum Light Team, Digital Back, IQ 180, Jaroslav Wieczorkiewicz, P 65+, Phase One, The Trial | Comments (9)

AWAKENING – PART I – Finding Your Anchor Point

November 7, 2011 – 13:51

When working on a new concept, especially at the early stage I always look for something what will drive my idea, something that will provide ‘the Grip’, or what I call The Anchor Point.

It is not necessarily the most important part of the story, but it is a prominent enough element of the puzzle to give you a reference to work around it!

In some cases it might be your model, sometimes it is the location, but this time it is a prop – a part of our future set…

But let’s start where we left the Quest last time.

What we have managed to collect was a pile of pallets and a trampoline. Plus I’ve thrown in a few hard boards.

I know that it is not clear for you to see where we are going with this, and it’s because you haven’t seen the storyboard yet!

We will get to that too, but you don’t want to know the ending just yet… do you?

To build something, we had to dismantle all the elements…

… and this is how we made it happen.