Street photography workshop in Vienna
In November I flew to Vienna, Austria for a street photography workshop with Severin Koller.
I thought about it for a while before making the booking, because I thought it’s maybe a little decadent to do so. But Nicole quickly convinced me by saying something along the lines of: “You only live once. You like his photos a lot. Go, do it!”. So I booked the workshop, flights and accommodation.
Unfortunately, and to my surprise, the workshop was cancelled two days beforehand and one day before my flight on Tuesday. But lucky me, Severin contacted me directly and suggested to do a workshop just for me. Instead of the originally scheduled 3 days, the workshop took place on two days – one day meeting and shooting and one day in the darkroom. But that was absolutely fine with me, now that I got an exclusive one-on-one training.
So, here are my impressions from these days in Vienna. One roll was shot on my Olympus Trip 35, but most photos were taken with a Canon Canonet G-III QL-17. The films were either Ilford HP-5 Plus, Kodak Tri-X or Ilford FP-4. The rolls were developed in Xtol 1+1 and scanned with the Epson V200.
On Thursday, the first day of the workshop, we met at Café Ritter, had coffees and got to know each other. We then went out, walked on and around Mariahilferstraße and shot quite a few frames before having an early dinner.
On Friday, I was walking the streets on my own.
On Saturday, I followed Severin’s recommendation and went to the “Brunnenmarkt”, a busy, multicultural food market.
On Sunday it was time to meet again. We spent a whole day in the darkroom, developing the 7 rolls of film I had shot, made contact prints, chose the photos we wanted to print, and then actually printed them.
To me, it was fascinating to create prints in a complete analog workflow. Especially watching the printing-paper slowly fade in and reveal the image in the chemical bath was just magic. And the quality is amazing!
The prints had to wash overnight, so we met one last time on Monday, my last day in Vienna. Severin handed me my washed and dried prints, gave me a signed copy of his Vienna-Magazine and we had a last drink together.
I spent my remaining hours in Vienna at the Prater. But the rain never stopped and so there was not much going on and it was just wet. I still took a few photos, before it was time to make my way back home to Düsseldorf.
In the end, I’m very glad I attended the workshop. I learned a lot and had a great time. Thanks again @severinkoller, for making it happen despite the cancellation of the original workshop!
P.S.: How many hats did you count? ;-)