We spent the last week in Spain with a few hundred other photographers & videographer at The Rural Workshop. And, while writing this, we still can’t believe it happened: we were there as speakers / mentors / teachers / or however you’d call it, alongside other talented people from our industry, such as: Theo Gosselin, Kirsten Lewis, Steve Glashier, A&Y Video, Brett Butterstein, Rosie Hardy, Paul Liebt Paula, 2 Brides, Oli Sansom, Gianluca Adovasio, Magdalena Berny, Couple Of Prague, Marta Bevacqua, Alejandro Gomez, Ivan Troyanovsky, Keisy & Rocky. Thinking back to it makes it even more surreal for us, while we are sitting in front of the computer back in Hamburg with a flue and fever after a week in Barcelona.
Let’s jump back to a few months ago: when we first got the email from Roberto and Cristina (the organizers of the workshop), asking us to speak in front of the attendees and talk about what we are doing as “Hafenliebe”, we nearly freaked out. Actually we never did anything like that ever before.
“Why should we? We are not good in speaking in front of people we don’t know, yet in another language. Even more: what should we talk about?” Thoughts like these went through our heads and we were discussing whether we should jump in the cold water or not.
And we did. Oh, yes – we did.
It was nerve wrecking. Our hearts beat faster when we were thinking about the things to come.
When we arrived in Barcelona on Monday, it was still unbelievable for us, that we would talk in front of a group of photographers who were interested in our work. On Tuesday we woke up, already nervous and thought “what the hell were we thinking? Do we really have to do it?” Fifteen minutes before our first presentation we ran to the bathroom several times. Nervousness was hitting us.
But… at the end of the day, after we did our presentation – we were smiling wide, like idiots. We never expected it to be that nice and to see that maybe some people carried something with them from our workshop was more than satisfying.
We talked about our approach on wedding photography, about how to put your own heart & soul into your work and how allowing your own experiences in life shine through in your art will help make it unique.
On the third day of the Rural week we had a “live shoot” with Susana & David to show everyone how we work and why we do it the way we do. That was kinda weird cause we did it in front of 60 people who were looking at us while we were shooting a couple. During that we were answering questions, sharing our camera settings and helped when the attendees were doing their pictures as well. We managed to not have it turn into the classical workshop mass shooting that both of us dislike so much.
What else can we say about our first workshop experience? Well, probably it’s better to show you some pictures – even if we weren’t able to capture everything that happened (f.e. the epic party on Wednesday where we all went crazy!).
We want to thank Cristina & Roberto for having us, the whole team at The Rural workshop for always being helpful and heart-warming, Jess of Happy Endings BCN for helping us with planning the shoot and especially Sara for being the best translator we could have hoped for.
Rural family, we love you. Abrazo Colectivo!
Appreciating the time you’ve spent here…
… and if you’re inspired, I’m ready to listen, to click, to capture. Let’s craft the narrative of your love, together.
