BORUT PETERLIN in a rabbit hole of photography

The real advantage of digital photography vs. black and white analog photography is that you can transform darkroom into sauna!

I’m glad that Mladina chosen my picture to be that picture of the year. On it Minister Zver shows Prime Minister Janša and Minister Virant results of elections on Parlamentarial elections 2008 in Slovenia, where they have lost it. This was a moment nobody was expecting. Prime Minister Janša was not only expecting victory, but victory with great advantage, but lost the elections with few thousand votes. When I shot the image it was really intense moment. We were a herd of about 40+ photographers, cameramans and journalists and we were elbowing each other and we were constantly pushed by bodyguards.

There was enough light from cameras, so I chosen a wide angle lens 24/f1,4 35mm and ISO 250. I was fast and fixed lens and 12,7 million pixels allowed me to crop the image. I took a lot of photographs and when Minister Zver was showing a text message on the phone to Prime Minister I knew it’s a decisive moment. I was reading text message on their expressions while photographing. That night I felt I’m in the flow of decisive moment!

As we all know digitalrailroad was liquidated three weeks after I payed 600 USD of yearly subscription. Few days ago I received an email from Capstone Global Library, where they bought my image above, but DRR got liquidated before they managed to pay, so I could invoiced them for licensing the image. For usual fee of 200 USD. Justice does come around, sometimes.

HERE is a podcast ART B5 on photography. Guest Jean-Christophe Couet.

This time I host Jean-Christophe Couet, a well known person on my blog. We studied together @ Famu, Prague, then @ Fabrica, Treviso and now he lives and works in Brooklyn. His work in Georgia won him a lot of recognition among others also THIS MULTIVISION that also won him a Nikon Thursday award at FOTOPUB Festival of Documentary Photography.

I got all excited about podcasts and although I need to learn a lot how to record and mix sound, that does not stop me and I hope it will not stop you as well. I got a promise from the best out of the radio business that they will teach me how to do it properly, so bear with me until then. I hope you will find this podcasts worth the time.

Bojan Radovič is one of the most interesting contemporary photographers in Slovenia. Yesterday there was an opening in Simulaker Gallery. With his work he is constantly requestioning photography as a medium. My favorite work of his is a wall on which a picture was hanging for decade or more. After this long period a trace of picture frame was left after the picture was taken away. It is a primitive light print or photo-graph isn’t.

I decided to do a podcast about the exhibition. I’m quite satisfied with the first try although I did many silly mistakes. Anyhow I want to do more podcasts like that. Perhaps Mladina will be interested in collaborating with that.
YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THE PODCAST HERE

In last issue of Mladina 52/2008 we are writing about Jure Engelsberger. Here is a portrait of him. We thought that I would do a photographic portrait and he would draw a self-portrait and we would publish it along side each other. Then Jure suggested that he would intervene in the photograph and I thought it was a great idea. Here is the result.

I did it in really tied time pressure right after the portrait of Marcel Štefančič and Sašo Hribar. We did portraits after the interview in a City Hotel in Ljubljana. I choose a lecture room with a projection canvas and with one flash I illuminated the background evenly and with second I illuminated his face. The trick is that although the background is illuminated the light does not illuminate the model from back, so you keep part of the face in shadow. How much shadow and how sharp you want it, you decide with distance between the face and the source of light.

A week later all the walls in a basement are made.

Today was a funeral of Božidar Dolenc he was great photographer and I have respected him a lot. I loved his picture series 1+1=1 and his documentation of underground in 80’s. He was a master of transforming a gray everyday into true poetry in photography.

DJ Borka, portraited for Mladina’s Stripitz rubric as a contrast to popular IPod fashion.

It wasn’t that simple as it looks like. I had to shoot this cover page in the evening, but I was too tired, so I got up around 5am and work on it for an hour. It wasn’t good and I redo it in editorial of Mladina. My schedule for that day collapsed and caused quite some stress.