The four-day intensive workshop is set to take place from January 15-18 at the official premises of photo.circle in Jhamsikhel, Lalitpur.
“This is a hands-on workshop where each participant will be required to develop a feature story through photographs in four days,” informs Nayan Tara and continues, “It’ll require a lot of research and planning.”Ahrens, the workshop leader, is a member of the photography board of the National Geographic AllRoads program. A German national, she has worked worldwide from South Africa to parts of Asia. Ahrens, who studied film and photography at London Guildhall University in the UK, has been working with GEO magazine since 2000 in Hamburg and New York.
A detailed outline of the activities for each of the days has been prepared by photo.circle to which Nayan Tara adds, “We’ll be starting as early as possible in the morning and hope to end by 2 pm each day so that we don’t take the entire day of the participants.”
On the list are activities such as sharing of portfolios of participants, photo editing exercises, discussion of importance of captions, and of course, shooting.
Although such an opportunity is rare and wonderful for photographers—amateurs and professionals alike—the requirements for getting on board this workshop is tough.
“We’re limiting this workshop to 12 participants because we want them to have a one-on-one experience with Tina Ahrens,” states Nayan Tara, validating the reason for the limitation. And only professional photographers with work experience will be allowed to register for the program, and lastly, each individual will have to submit a fee of Rs 6,000—a whopping amount that many lensmen can hardly afford.
“In the past, we’ve hosted many free workshops that people here seem to have taken for granted, and they rarely value the learning,” elucidates Nayan Tara, to which her colleague Bhushan adds, “This workshop is for the photographers’ own professional development, and they should be willing to invest for the improvement of their own skills.”
“We spent the last three years going after people but we aren’t going to do that anymore,” they assert. The duo also furthered that they are paying for the airfare and lodging of Ahrens, who will arrive in the capital on January 14, and therefore need to make up for the costs.
photo.circle’s last event for this year is a photography exhibition accompanied by a book release of their project “Hamra Hajuramaharu” (Our Grandmothers), which will open at the Nepal Art Council on Friday, December 18. The works of seven photographers and six writers, who have been working on the project since June 2009, will be featured at the show.
Registration deadline for the Storytelling Through Images workshop with Tina Ahrens is Saturday, December 5. For details go to www.photocircle.com.np
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