While I was editing these photos I just couldn’t help myself but to feel happy and sad at the same time. Being a part of Fotosofia 12 team really changed me, not only as a photographer, but as a person. When we arrived at Terme Tuhelj and met each other, none of us would have tought about the fact that we’re gonna become such close friends for only a week. As the days pass, I still find it hard to believe that it’s over and I’m kind of struggling with sad feelings, but as I write this I’m actually smiling because it was such a beautiful, life changing experience and I know how happy I’ll be when I see all those people again on some other Fotosofia action day.
The whole process of getting to know each other and Fotosofia itself I could say, started a month ago. Coming up with different kind of concepts for commercial, fashion and art photography really got us into the challenge before everything even started. I can remember the morning when we all sat together at the table and had cup of coffee before everything started. I couldn’t believe this was actually happening. As the days went on I had the feeling like we were there for weeks because we worked so good together, as a coherent group of absolutely crazy people! It amazed me how much we all felt like we know each other for way, way longer. It was hard and exhausting, I won’t lie. We had so much work to do, starting from classes in the morning, shooting in the afternoon and editing photos until almost morning, every day. Plus that the only models we had were each other. That’s where the fun began. Since we didn’t have that much time in between everything to catch the perfect time of day, light, pools when there aren’t people around, we had to make up the time, so one day for example we did a shoot at the pools at 8 am while the water was still ahh.. well, pretty cold. One morning I slept in and was late 20 min on the set when I had to dress up like mermaid and get into the pool at 7 am, because I edited photos until 4 am. My roommate Petra loves to sleep untill noon but when I needed her to model for me at 7 am, she got up and was ready to go in a few minutes. It amazed me how much we helped each other since we known each other only for a week. I’ve known Petra and Antonio form Fotosofia Advent Day and I was really happy to see them both afer 6 months, but also so excited to meet everybody else. Except us, there were five assistants from older Fotosofia seminars and they were there to teach us and help us with everything we need, so we took that advantage and tortured them for everything. It’s funny when I think about the fact how little they actually slept because someone of us needed a help with their photo concept, or someone didn’t know ‘how to Photoshop’. But every evening we got together at the conference hall full of laptops, cameras and light equipment, where we would turn up the music and edited photos while laughing at someone’s dirty jokes. Older Fotosofs (yes I’m gonna call them that :D) told us at the beginning how you can’t describe this feeling in words, you can’t explain to people how everything was, you can just encourage them to try it out for themselves. At fashion day, we sat in the shade waiting for a model to come, and Vedran, the older assistant told us how on the lat day, you feel something like a sword cutting through your chest because this is only once and it’s over. I could feel that on the last day when we sat by the fire and talked about everything.. But I’m not gonna cry about it now (because I already cried out what I needed to haha) I’m just gonna say that this experience inspired me for life. I don’t know how to put it in other words. Like everything I needed to know is confirmed by my departure there and by that whole week of, I don’t know, magic I could say.
There are so many things I needed to say but forgot or just decided to leave it between 20-something of us 🙂 I wanna thank Damir Hoyka who organised this and shared his knowledge with us, who really inspired us. To lecturers, who taught us some really amazing and cool stuff, some of them who came from other countries, just like celebrities, models, stylists and everybody else who became a part of this experience. If one person would miss, everything would be different. And except that we learned so, so much about expressive means of photography, we learned what it means being a team and how we need each other to create art. 🙂
I’m gonna post some of documentary photography I recorded. You can find so many behind the scenes articles online, and I’m gonna share links for some of them too. Art and fashion concepts will have to wait for some time to pass before we can publish them, but you can buy next edition of Grazia magazine in which you can find photos from our fashion day. 🙂 Some of the photos I recorded with my old analog Nikon and I’m so happy to have those kind of photos of us! Hope you enjoy them all. Sea of love, S.
https://www.tportal.hr/showtime/clanak/fotosofia-12-fashion-day-20170619
http://www.fotosofia.info/Blog.aspx?user=pekar
http://www.fotosofia.info/Blog.aspx?user=cGVrYXI%3d#983
