Tag Archives: Aurum

Behind The Scenes of The Milk Workshop in Oslo, Norway

May 30, 2017 – 14:27

We are back from the Milk Workshop in Oslo, and what an amazing event it was!

Another meet-up in Scandinavia and you have probably noticed that we are keep coming back to the same places, or rather catching up with the same lovely people.

There are a few spots in the world that make me feel like at home and in Norway we are always hosted by the great folks at IkonStudio.

Per and his group of assistants are very much like our London crew and working with them always makes you push the envelope and make something amazing happen!

And with the support from our partners at the StudioImport, our participants could use the best gear available out there.

We had a real beast in house… in the shape of PhaseOne FX Camera + IQ3 100MPx Digital back

…and quite exciting new HENSEL CITO 500 Lights. These bad boys are really fast and I will talk about them more in the near future!

Couple of years ago at IkonStudio we did this illustration for the Splash Heroes calendar and may I add it was the only image in the calendar that was done in the workshop environment, all others were accomplished at our London studio, in the very much controlled environment.

Having all that in mind we have decided to run with the most challenging concept to date and we took participants right to the centre of commercial-scale photoshoot involving milk, a pool , models and loads of creative vibes!

Here you can see PhaseOne XF hanging 5 meters above what in a few minutes became a pool of milk…

…well, the usual day at the studio…

Participants as always could test their ambition as a Milk dress designers and after the presentation shoot, they took the main stage.

We topped the event with a day worth of a postproduction process and after over 8h of mind bending we send our photographers homes to work on their future milky projects!

I am glad everyone was happy and got home safely as some of the people travelled from a faraway places like Paris or Los Angeles! I here salute you guys!

It was great to meet old friends and make new ones, and I am sure we will be back soon!

oh, last but not least.. as an avid reader of Jo Nesbø I couldn’t missed the occasion to visit Harry Hole’s watering hole – Restaurant Schroder in Oslo!
Great food and cool people inside – totally recommending that place.

P.S. For those who are asking about potential future events – it looks like you will meet us this year in Cologne, Germany and potentially at the begging of the 2018 in Australia (and I hope) USA!

Hope to see you there!

Cheers
Jaroslav

By Aurum Light | Posted in Conceptual, Liquids, Milk, Models, Test Shoot, Workshops & Events | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

AWAKENING – PART IV – TAKE YOUR TIME…

October 7, 2013 – 18:16

Working on a personal project without the pressure of time can be actually a tricky task…

With the usual pace of working on a jobs to pay your bills the time is a luxury that most of us can’t afford.
In the times of “likes”, one click glimpse and content constant flow through your newsfeed we all experience the unnatural pressure to produce quickly more body of work. To shoot and shoot and shoot…

Whenever I work for myself, (especially then) time is the crucial factor.
My approach is to take my time. Relax and do whatever has to be done. Find people you really want to work with. Organise location and gear that you need. And when that all falls in the right places press the button and set the date.

You soon understand that you don’t have to do anything for anyone, you will have clear headspace but finding time can still be a challenge.
That is when people start cutting corners, trying to find the easiest way out. This is the moment when things can go wrong.

When I work on a bigger scale project I always take three important elements into consideration: The Scope, The Time and Money.

It is clear for most that the project with a big scope needs more budget to cover props, location, team etc. But it is not necessary clear for everyone that projects like that need relevant amount of time.
By affecting any of the above circles, like having not enough money, or time you will affect the common part of sets…

That common part to me represents a Life Span of your project.

I had a professor once who would say to a student during the project consultations that:
“…you had a month to prepare yet your proposal looks like you have spent on it 30 minutes last night. Therefore I can give you only 30 second of my time…”
I think that was fair game.

It is pretty much the same situation with your viewers, if you will cut corners while working on your project, people will notice that and will not spent their time to look and explore it, to understand it, to share it…
Your project life span will be rather short…

Don’t rush things!
If you have to wait, so be it. I am taking my time to develop the concept, to find more money, to work with great people.

Regular readers know that I have been working on Awakening for two years now and here is one of the reasons why it is taking so loooong…

In 2010 I was introduced to a very talented artist, designer extraordinaire and a really nice person Sophie de Oliveira Barata.
Sophie founded The Alternative Limb Project and she is designing prosthetics for amputees.
But not just limbs… her work is really special and recently you could read about her in WIRED .


Photo: Alex Lake via WIRED

We became friends instantly and since day one I knew that we will work together the problem was the time of course. We couldn’t match our calendars in 2011 and in 2012 she was overwhelmed with work for people from around the world coming for London Paralympics 2012. You could see Viktoria Modesta in Sophie’s Crystallised Leg during the Paralympics Closing Ceremony…

So I had to wait…

In my second instalment you could see the concepts for the main character outfits. I needed Sophie to help me with the Helmet.

The concept for the helmet was done by talented Marek Okon who did this illustration and kindly let me use it as a base for the concept.

I have developed technical drawings for Sophie to take a look and in June when we finally had some free time on our hands (!) we pressed the button!

The model is no one else than the one and only Jay Jessop!
You have met her on our blog as a Bamboo Forest Warrior. Jay is a good sport and is always up for crazy concepts!


We went through many changes but I really love the effect and I think we did a great job on this one!
It was absolutely worth the wait all that time to get it right. I wanted to stay true to the original idea and just couldn’t accept a standard helmet replacement – it had to be special and I couldn’t make it happen in a short time, without special people around me!

The journey is as important as the final effect!

It was tiring but now we are ready to move on to the next element…
Stay tuned there is more to come!

Thanks for checking!
Jaroslav

www.AurumLight.com
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AWAKENING – PART III – Make It Happen vs Make It Real

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 | Posted in Conceptual, Editorial, Models, Test Shoot, The Quest - Awakening | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (1)

THE MILK – Calendar UK – First Prize and Gold Medal at Prix de la Photographie Paris 2013

July 3, 2013 – 14:47

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We did it again!
Second year in the row we have been awarded First prize and The Gold Medal in the renowned Photography Competition PX3 Prix de la Photographie Paris in category Advertising, for the series The MILK – used in our 2013 limited Black Calendar edition.

In 2012 we were awarded First Prize and Gold Medal for our other Black Calendar from the series THE TRIAL.

THE MILK series and other winning images of this year 2013 Px3 edition, will be exhibited in the Espace Dupon gallery, in Paris, from 10th July.

I am very happy and would like to thank everyone involved – it wouldn’t have been possible without the effort of the whole team!
It is pleasure to working with you.

P.S. If you are interested our up and coming calendar for 2014 will contain a 12 illustrations from our recent series MILKY PINUPS and will be available this autumn. Most likely before our Australia Milky Tour 2013!

All the best!
Jaroslav

www.AurumLight.com

Px3 – The “Prix de la Photographie Paris”, generally described as Europe’s biggest and most prestigious photography competition, strives to promote the appreciation of photography, to discover emerging talent, and introduce photographers from around the world to the artistic community of Paris.

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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


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My best regards
Jaroslav

By Aurum Light | Posted in Conceptual, Graphics, Liquids, Milk, Models, Workshops & Events | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (12)

Milky PinUps !

May 28, 2013 – 03:12

Today we have a few illustrations from our recent Workshops in London, Frankfurt and Los Angeles.
We had a great time with photographers from all over the world and now are gearing up for a really fantastic Milky weekend in Italy, produced by Manfrotto and Marco Tortato in Bassano on 8-9 June.

It looks like it will be our last event in Europe in summer 2013 as we are moving on…
I am happy to let you know that we will be visiting for our Milky Workshops AUSTRALIA again in November 2013!

MILK Workshops 2014!
Book your place now, here: >>>BOOKING PAGE

5-6 April 2014 – London, United Kingdom
17-18 May 2014 – Frankfurt, Germany

I hope to see you there!
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This time I thought it will be cool to approach the liquid theme in a more relaxed and funny way.
So we threw some colours into the mix and came up with a personal Milky PinUp parody and tribute to my favourites pinup style artists.

It was a lot of fun to work on these images and I am happy with the results as you never know if the liquid is actually going to work like you want and could you translate any concept into a Liquid scenario…

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Here you can find some of the original paintings that we used as a references.

As you can see most of them were done by Gil Elvgren but there is more cool work from a talented people like Alberto Vargas or Greg Hildebrandt, to name but a few.

And the behind the scenes of the messy part of that game:


BTS photos by Thorsten Roos & Niels Walldorf

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Oh, and the setup! Enjoy!

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All together it is a really fun series and a cool change from our usual White on Black illustrations.

And yes, it very much looks like an upcoming 2014 calendar ;-)…

More illustrations can be found on our Website here >>>
And if you missed it last time, here is our BTS video on Lighting for Liquids >>>

Cheers and hope to see you in Oz!
Jaroslav
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Credits:

Photography & Postproduction – Jaroslav Wieczorkiewicz

Producer: Lan Bui
AurumLight Team: Aleksandra Wieczorkiewicz, Ben Prewett, Carl Keane, Misa Garcia, Saul Garcia, Jochen Lauffer, Bjoern Witczak
Support: Jan Kocovski, Niels Walldorf
MakUp & Hair: Marlen Watzl, Jay Jessop, Vanessa Zalamea, Andrea Rangel, Alana Baca
Models: Johanna Valerie Schade, Brooke Nicholes, Ly nna Nielson, Ella Darling, Sascha Aleksander,

www.AurumLight.com

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MILK Workshops 2014!
Book your place now, here: >>>BOOKING PAGE

5-6 April 2014 – London, United Kingdom
17-18 May 2014 – Frankfurt, Germany

By Aurum Light | Posted in Conceptual, Editorial, Graphics, Liquids, Milk, Models, Workshops & Events | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (21)