Black and White Photo Walk In Vienna

Capturing Contrasts

All of the photos in this article are taken by me.

Since last October I’ve been organising photo walks in Vienna where we take pictures in a certain style every time. The last photo walk was especially nice and we were focusing on black and white photography, the most elegant and stylised type of photography.

We got lucky since it was sunny and the weather was perfect for high-contrast b&w shots.

The main idea behind these walks is to push one’s boundaries to create strong visuals.

One problem I start to encounter is that sometimes I have 20 people signed up and 15 more on a waitlist. While these photo walks are very enjoyable, it gets quite difficult to organise ourselves when there are more than 10–12 people.

As I told you earlier I perceive black and white photography as a medium of values that I recommend to every beginner. Because as we learn to paint by sketching (rendering only values), we can learn photography by training our ability to work with light (photographing in black and white).

Hues are complex and all have different values, and colour photography is more advanced in general.

Since during my photo walks I want us to do different exercises, black and white is a very nice topic to focus on.

Here are the shots from one of the latest walks that I would like to share with you:

Was too lazy to photoshop out Starbuck’s logo from the first photo, but now I see that it’s making the shot worse.

I focused a lot on the shadows this time. I deliberately tried to lead us towards open areas where we could get more light and play around with it.

it’s the first time I’ve seen a demonstration where some people were holding a paper with something like “We stand with police” written on it. Can’t support such weird ideas, but I took a photo of the crowd…))

The shots with the shadow of a tree and the second one with the shadow of a lamp (below) are taken with Godox TT600 at full power and pointed directly at these objects to create uneven lighting and a surreal mood.

I think having a community and taking pictures together is something that can skyrocket our productivity and make us all a little better at what we love to do.

For now, I plan to continue with the photo walks every week and soon will also have my first studio workshop which will probably continue on weekly as well. And I will surely share my experience with you.

If you happen to visit Vienna, join us via one of these links (it’s free):

Photo jam in Vienna | Meetup

Vienna Photography meet-ups Chat

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