The Backlight Photo Festival organized by Photographic Centre Nykyaika opened up 17^thSeptember 2011. Festival is focused on photography and photography-based projects which promote intercultural dialogue. On Friday ^16th took place three vernissages: “Migration and Integration into Ruhr Region” in Mältinranta Art Center, “Territories and Desire” in Tampere Art Museum and “Migration and Nomadic living in 21^st Century” in TR1 Kunsthalle. During that day we could admire the wonderful photographs and talk with the artists from all over the word.

TAMK in cooperation with Backlight Photo Festival organized two workshops. One of them was conducted by great photographer Andrzej Maciejewski whose exhibition “Garden of Eden” could be seen during the Festival. Workshop started from 1, 5 hour lecture on Friday 16^th where Mr Andrzej introduced himself and his works. After the lecture, some of us had opportunity to show him portfolio and discuss about it.

   

Next day of workshop started at 10 in the morning on the 1 floor in Finlayson Campus.  Mr Andrzej gave very clear and interesting lecture to his 12 students about lightening objects in shooting sessions. To practise lightening effects we had to build three white cubes (one for each group). Teams could use only one light to create four different photographs of the cube. Cameras which we used, Nikon D700, were set to black and white mode what helped to check percentage of colour content in grey scale later on. Thanks to this exercise we could also fix issues such as ISO, shutter speed and aperture. Around 4 p.m. all photos were ready to present and discuss what went good or bad. If the photography was not as we expected we could hear advances from our mentor.  

Sunday morning started also from the lecture. That time we learn about tricks which were used by Mr Andrzej during his work on ‘Garden of Eden’. He showed to us photos from his studio in Canada which performed his way of work. We could hear also interesting story about Camera Obscura. He built one walk-in type of this device in his garden for ‘Weather report’ project. That day was focus on the lightening exercise but more difficult than in previous day. We had to make still life set and photograph it in the interesting way at least four times. There were so many things to do that the time was up very fast.

Last day of workshop was on Monday 19^th in the afternoon. We had still 1 hour to continue still life’s shooting sessions. During presentation of our works we had to guess what type of light, reflector and screens were used by other teams. It was very interesting exercise which taught us how many things we can do with light to make our photography better.

Workshop was full of useful information, fun and study of professional approach to lightening.