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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 Aurum, AurumLight, Australia, Jaroslav, Jaroslav Wieczorkiewicz, Light, Milk, Norway, photography, Team, Workshop, workshops | 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!