Photographs & Words by Kurniadi Widodo

So, in the end I decided to join the workshop. I registered on Thursday, after I wrote the last entry in this blog. The 'registration' turned out to be some kind of waiting list, where we write down our names and numbers, and then basically wait till the organizer call us... oh well. So I waited and waited. But the phone didn't ring. Not until half an hour before the workshop began. What the hell. When I came, they were already starting. A young lady from the organizer told me that the workshop was gonna be shorter, from the original 3 days to 2 days. But tell you what, I'm glad I joined. Cause it was good.

Fucking awesome, even.

For starter, Sigit Pamungkas is one badass photojournalist. I mean... The man's the real deal. He's been photographing lots of important events, seen lotsa shit, almost getting himself killed in different assignments (always a plus point, heh), knows other badass photographers in person (You guys seen Nachtwey's War Photographer documentary? When Nachtwey's photographing Kawah Ijen, he asked Sigit for reference... how friggin cool is that?), and basically being a great person to talk to about photojournalism in general. Just hearing him sharing his experiences got me excited.

There was also another photojournalist in the workshop, Antonius Riva Setiawan, who also knows his stuff. He's made features for local and international NGO projects, and also attended a workshop by VII Photo agency in 2004. He's a cool guy, really expressive and straight-forward, and also a nice person to talk to. We talked about street photography during a break, enlightened me with new insights and new ways of looking street photography. What wicked was... he brought a Leica M7, with a Summicron 35/2. Yup, last night was my first time holding a Leica. :D Before that I've only heard and read about that thing. But holding it yourself... it's a whole different experience. Dunno if it's just excitement, but the camera *is* really nice to handle. Gotta love how it focuses on objects.

Anyway, about the workshop itself... it's gonna be long to write down all the details, but to make it simple it deals with creating sharp contents within your photos. To me personally, this workshop really broadened and changed my whole view of photojournalism. In a good way. It made me realize how clueless and dumb I was in the subject. Looking back at my photos I made this far with the knowledge I got from the workshop, they all seem... well, trash. Damn.

One of these days I'm gonna try hanging out to Srengenge office, see if I can meet Riva again (well, he did invite me, and offered to show some books and films about Bresson... cool!) and talk more about the subjects. I still got some questions in mind.

For the time being, here's some trashy pics from a short street session I did several days ago, before the workshop.