How We Workshop
The real heart of "Finding the Light"
I’ve been thinking about the community threads that held our last exhibition together. The show might be down, but the workshops that ran alongside it are still echoing through the work people are making. And since the extended version of Finding the Light is up at ELWINCOFFEE, this feels like the right moment to revisit what we built together and make a bit of noise for the organising team who keep this whole thing alive.
We’ve got a few images from the sessions that deserve to live outside our group chats, so I’m putting them here too. Let’s start with Ravi and Tasia.
Ravi and Tasia’s storytelling portrait workshop reminded everyone that the real engine of a portrait isn’t the camera. It’s the connection. The two of them pushed us to slow down, actually look at the person in front of us, and let the image grow from that moment. Good portraits don’t arrive through technical perfection. They arrive when you and the subject meet somewhere honest. Layer by layer. Thought by thought. A shared walk, really.
Then came Anastasia’s cinematic lighting workshop, which was easily one of the highlights for me. She brought in cinematographers Simona Pranulyte, Owain Morgan and Max Conran, and the room shifted. Suddenly we were deep in the world of Astera lighting, not the marketing version, the lived experience. You could see how people lit up when they realised what those tools could actually do. We had seasoned camera operators sitting next to people touching Astera lights for the first time. That mix is rare, and it’s the kind of room that changes how you work.
And finally, Marion’s Cyanotype workshop and Diana’s Portrait with one light.
That’s the roundup. Nothing flashy. Just honest notes from a week that gave our exhibition its real backbone.
Big thanks to Astera for the sponsorship.
See you in the next room. Take it easy.
Akin.