Today, on the 22nd of May an exhibition of the In-Public street photography collective of which I am the newest member opens in in Stockholm, Sweden. The exhibition is organised by CUP Stockholm and is the first group exhibition I participating in. It includes a total of 68 photos from all 22 members of the In-Public collective.

Dates: 22 May – 26 June 2013.
Venue: Snickarbacken 7, Stockholm, Sweden.

More information on the website of CUP Stockholm.

Additionally, there will also be an “In-Public” street photography workshop with Nick Turpin, Blake Andrews and Matt Stuart on 31st May to 2nd June.

CUP (Contemporary Urban Photography) is a Stockholm based organization promoting street & urban photography both online and offline. CUP aims to introduce compelling work of high quality international street/urban photographers to the Scandinavian market.

Exhibition website: http://www.firlej.wroc.pl/program/2013,04,299.html

About the exhibition at: fotopolis.pl, Gazeta Wyborcza, wp.pl, swiatobrazu.pl, fotografuj.pl, purpose.com.pl, fotograficzno.pl.

The promotional poster of Cardiff After Dark (Cardiff Po Zmroku) exhibition at Firlej Club in Wroclaw, Poland.

Intro:

There were two separate one-week long workshops organised and run by Maciej Dakowicz and David Solomons.

The First Workshop

Dates: 6 – 12 May 2013 (7 days) .
Participants and their photos: Chris Meirick and Radoslaw Kepa.

A workshop report by Maciej

Radek photographs people sitting on the steps in the busy area of Eminonu near Galata Bridge. His assignment was to get close to people and photograph them with a wide angle lens, trying to get a complex layered composition. But the photographs should not only be nicely composed, but should also contain a decisive moment, emotions or gestures in it. A hard task!

Chris takes photos of Turkish men playing cards in a cafe in Uskudar in Istanbul. While exploring the Uskudar district on the Asian side of Istanbul Chris and me saw this little social club where men spend their free time drinking tea, reading newspapers and playing card. Without thinking much we entered the cafe, ordered two cups of tea and started taking photographs of the locals. Istanbul people are a very friendly and hospitable people. This is how we work on the workshops, we get close to people.

Our group waits for the doners and chicken kebabs in a small restaurant nearby the apartment in Aksaray area of Istanbul. A well deserved meal after a long first day of shooting.

The Second Workshop

Dates: 13 – 19 May 2013 (7 days) .
Participants: Aylin Elci, Mark Carey, Richard Mills and Peter Hjortso.

A workshop report by Maciej

A moment of relax for the whole group after the whole day of shooting. Moments before starting shooting Istanbul after dark in Beyoglu on the Friday night of the workshop. Photo by Charlie Kirk.

Aylin takes photos of a group of children in Tarlabasi district of Istanbul on the second day of the workshop. It was Aylin’s first attempt at travel and street photography and she did very well.

Richard photographs a man with a glass of chai at the Fatih Wednesday market in Istanbul. The majority of Istanbul people are very camera friendly and love being photographed. During the workshop we encouraged our students to engage with the local people, to talk to them in order to be able to get natural photographs without smiling faces and photograph people from a close distance.

Peter scouts for photos in the colourful Balat district of Istanbul. It was Peter’s second workshop with Maciej as he attended the workshop in India in November 2012. He has progressed very much as a photographer and shot some really amazing photos in Istanbul. Approaching and photographing people is not an issue for Peter anymore and some of his compositions are amazing – complex and layered.

Mark photographs a group of revellers on a Friday night in Beyoglu district of Istanbul. We shot Istanbul’s night life twice on the Friday and Satuday night. A great experience, people were very friendly and did not mind our cameras at all.

A quick group lunch in a small restaurant in Fatih area of Istanbul after shooting the Wednesday street market. Each day we were meeting in the middle of the day in designated points to have lunch together and change shooting partners for the second part of the day. Photo taken by a little Turkish boy helping at the restaurant.

Tutors:

Maciej Dakowicz is a widely published and exhibited photographer and an experienced traveller. He is the author of ‘Cardiff After Dark’, published by Thames and Hudson and is profiled in their bestseller ‘Street Photography Now’. Maciej recently joined the international street photography collective In-Public.
David Solomons is an experienced and renowned street photographer from London and member of the street photography collective In-Public. He has been exhibited widely and has published two books of street photography ‘Happenstance’ and ‘Underground’. David’s website: davidsolomons.com.

Workshops summary:

There were two separate week-long street and travel photography workshops in Istanbul organised and run by Maciej Dakowicz and David Solomons. These intense workshops were intended for four participants each and were mostly practical in application, where the participants were shooting on a daily basis with both tutors, sharing their experiences and improving photographic approaches and techniques. Shooting was done in pairs with no large group shootings, eliminating the common problem of other workshops where there are too many people trying to shoot the same subject. Each day Maciej and David were shooting in pairs with one different participant. The day began with breakfast where shooting plans were discussed and later groups met for lunch, where some preliminary reviews and exchange pairings for the afternoon session took place. At the end of each evening, there were more detailed editing and feedback session followed by more informal discussions over supper and drinks. As the week progressed, David and Maciej gave presentations that demonstrated the various approaches of story telling and work editing. Apart from daytime travel and street photography the aspects of night photography were also explored, as there were one or two evenings of shooting ‘Istanbul After Dark’.

Click to read about the previous street photography workshop Istanbul in June 2012.

 
Click to read about: WORKSHOPS – UPCOMING WORKSHOPS – PAST WORKSHOPS – PARTICIPANT TESTIMONIALS

Dates:

• 19 – 30 June 2013.

Places:

• Albania – Tirana and two more cities. The detailed itinerary will be decided with the workshop participants.
Albania is one of the last unspoiled destinations in Europe. There are very few tourists, people are very friendly and they are very relaxed about being photographed. It is definitely one of the best countries for street photographers, not only in Europe.

Fee:

• £500 per person. 3 participants only. (1 LAST PLACE AVAILABLE)

Costs:

Apart from the £500 fee, participants are responsible for their flights, insurance, accommodation, food and other expenses. As a group we will stay in the same hotel and participants can choose between sharing twin rooms or staying in single rooms. Sharing a twin room should cost about 20 Euros per person per day. In Tirana we will stay at Freddy’s Hostel – a lovely place minutes away from the main city square. Flights from London to Tirana currently cost around £250.

Description:

It will be a very practical workshop and there will be a lot of shooting every day. You will be working in pairs changing “partners” after a lunch break. You will be shooting with Maciej every day since there will be only four of you altogether. For example you shoot with Maciej on Monday morning, then you shoot with the first person in the afternoon, the next morning with another person and with Maciej again in the afternoon. By shooting with Maciej you will have a chance to observe him at work, learn his techniques and tricks. Maciej is a very experienced travel and street photographer and you will learn a great deal of new things. In the evening you will edit and discuss your photos in the group together with Maciej. There will be plenty of opportunities to talk photography too. It will be a very memorable week.

Maciej’s photos shot during his brief visit to Tirana and Berati in Albania in April 2010:

What does Lonely Planet says about Albania?
“Awaking Sleeping Beauty–like in the 1990s from her hardline communist isolation, Albania was a stranger from another time. Her cities weren’t choked by car fumes, her beaches were unspoilt by mass tourism, her long-suffering people were a little dazed and confused. While things have changed a lot since then, this ancient land still offers something increasingly rare in Europe these days – a glance into a culture that is all its own. Raised on a diet of separation and hardship, Albania is distinctly Albanian.
You’ll continue to find beautiful pristine beaches on parts of the Ionian Coast (try the charming town of Saranda), fascinating classical sites like ancient Berat, and dramatic mountain citadels, but the mad traffic of Tirana is symptomatic of a bustling, bright city shrugging off its Stalinist grey patina. Squat toilets are no longer the norm and you can even sip cocktails at hip bars while listening to rock bands. Meanwhile, Northern Albania keeps the country’s reputation as a wild frontier alive and well, with bleak mountains and the occasional blood feud.
Not just the preserve of the adventurous, Albania is a warm and sincerely hospitable country – with enough rough edges to keep it interesting.”

and this:
“After years of government-enforced isolation, Albanians welcome travellers with sincere hospitality. Upgraded roads swirl past the new houses and bar/restaurant/hotel developments that demonstrate the country’s newfound prosperity. August sees quiet seaside spots morph into loud disco-laden towns where every day is a thumping weekend. Head north and you might spot locals in traditional dress, sworn virgins and shepherds guiding flocks in the otherwise inhospitable mountains.
Albania is unforgettable: donkeys tethered to concrete bunkers, houses crawling up each other to reach the hill-tops in Berat and Gjirokastra, and isolated beaches.”

And what about Tirana?
“Lively, colourful Tirana has changed beyond belief in the last decade from the dull, grey city it once was. It’s amazing what a lick of paint can do – covering one ugly tower block with horizontal orange and red stripes, another with concentric pink and purple circles and planting perspective-fooling cubes on its neighbour.
Trendy Blloku buzzes with the well-dressed nouvelle bourgeoisie hanging out in bars or zipping between boutiques. Quite where their money comes from is the subject of much speculation in this economically deprived nation, but thankfully you don’t need much of it to have a fun night out in the city’s many bars and clubs.
The city’s grand central boulevards are lined with fascinating relics of its Ottoman, Italian and communist past – from delicate minarets to socialist murals – guarded by bored-looking soldiers with serious automatic weaponry. The traffic does daily battle with both itself and pedestrians in a constant scene of unmitigated chaos. On any given day half the roads seem to be dug up, although it can be hard to tell where the roadwork ends and the potholes begin.
Loud, crazy, colourful, dirty – Tirana is simply fascinating.”

Read more on the Lonely Planet website and on wikitravel.

 
Please read testimonials from the participants of previous workshops: Workshop Testimonials.

ABOUT Maciej Dakowicz

Maciej is an experienced Polish photographer, traveller, organiser of photo trips and gallerist living in London, UK. He holds a PhD in computer science, but abandoned science to focus on photography. He is one of the founders of Third Floor Gallery in Cardiff, a member of the Wideangle photo agency, the international street photography collective In-Public and the un-posed Polish street photography collective. He has worked on various photographic projects in the UK and abroad and his interests are in documentary, travel and street photography.
Maciej’s photos have been widely published and exhibited around the world, shown at photo festivals (including Visa Pour l’Image international festival of photojournalism in Perpignan, France) and he is a recipient of numerous awards. He was profiled among 46 leading street photographers in the “Street Photography Now” book published by the British publisher Thames & Hudson, who also published Maciej’s first monograph – Cardiff After Dark in October 2012.

 
Click to read about: WORKSHOPS – UPCOMING WORKSHOPS – PAST WORKSHOPS – PARTICIPANT TESTIMONIALS

More information:
• the website of the festival.
• the website of the exhibition.
• the website of the Kaunas Photography Gallery

May update

Cardiff After Dark exhibition at Kaunas Photography Gallery in Kaunas, Lithuania as a part of Kaunas Photo Festival 2013

• 16 – 22 September 2013.

Places:

• Fez and Meknes.
The group will be based in Fez and Meknes for a couple of days, which is only 30mins away by train or taxi.
Fez is the medieval capital of Morocco and has the best-preserved old city in the Arab world. The sprawling walled medina is enormous, once you enter it you can walk for hours through its labyrinth-like narrow lanes, covered bazaars and busy streets. It is a very alive place and there are many day life activities waiting to be photographed. The light in summer is great and there will be many chances to play with it in the lanes. Apart from the medina will will spend time photographing in the new town which has a very different vibe to the historical medina.

Fee:

• £500 per person. 3 participants only.

Costs:

Apart from the £500 fee, participants are responsible for their flights, insurance, accommodation, food and other expenses. As a group we will stay in the same hotel and participants can choose between sharing twin rooms or staying in single rooms. Sharing a twin room should cost about 20 Euros per person per day. The flights to Fez are affordable at the moment and a return Ryanair flight from London Stansted can be had for around £150 (those flights operate on Thursdays and Sundays only).

Description:

It will be a very practical workshop and there will be a lot of shooting every day. You will be working in pairs changing “partners” after lunch break. You will be shooting with Maciej every day since there will be only four of you. For example you shoot with Maciej on Monday morning, then you shoot with the first person, the next morning with another person and with Maciej again in the afternoon. By shooting with Maciej you will have a chance to observe him at work, learn his techniques and tricks. Maciej is a very experienced travel and street photographer and you will learn a great deal of new things. In the evening you will edit and discuss your photos in the group together with Maciej. There will be plenty of opportunities to talk photography too. It will be a very memorable week.

Maciej’s photos shot during his brief visit to Fez in July 2009:

Inspiration from Magnum photographers including Bruno Barbey and Harry Gruyaert: LINK.

Please visit the page of the previous similar street photography workshop in Istanbul: Istanbul in June 2012 to see what to expect from the workshop. It was a very memorable adventure and a lot of great pictures was taken.

What do the previous workshop participants say about their experiences? Read their testimonials: LINK.

ABOUT Maciej Dakowicz

Maciej is an experienced Polish photographer, traveller, organiser of photo trips and gallerist living in London, UK. He holds a PhD in computer science, but abandoned science to focus on photography. He is one of the founders of Third Floor Gallery in Cardiff, a member of the Wideangle photo agency and the un-posed Polish street photography collective. He has worked on various photographic projects in the UK and abroad and his interests are in documentary, travel and street photography.
Maciej’s photos have been widely published and exhibited around the world, shown at photo festivals (including Visa Pour l’Image international festival of photojournalism in Perpignan, France) and he is a recipient of numerous awards. He was profiled among 46 leading street photographers in the “Street Photography Now” book published by the British publisher Thames & Hudson, who also published Maciej’s first monograph – Cardiff After Dark in October 2012.

 
Maciej’s photos from the workshop (each taken while shooting with one of the workshop participant):

More Maciej’s photos from the trip: “Jordan 2011 Photo Adventure” set on flickr