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This is the story of a group picture.

Last weekend Monika and I held an analog photography workshop in Braunschweig, Germany. We held the workshop together with our friends Micha and Tilla of Spürsinn; they have helped make this a very special event with their never ending knowledge about all things cameras and film. When it comes to analog photography, we couldn't have been in better hands. And when it comes to photography history, Braunschweig is a true gold mine - it's the birthplace of both, Voigtländer and Rollei, two iconic German camera brands.

Not only did we hold the workshop in the city of Braunschweig, we held it at the very spot that used to be the office of Mr. Heidecke, one of the two founders of Rollei. The very same rooms actually! I can't think of a better place to hold an analog photography workshop and the surroundings did their part to make this a very special event.

Now you might be are aware of the fact that I love taking unusual group pictures at workshops. This one was no exception.

We literally had an analog camera museum around us during the workshop with everything from folding pocket cameras from the 1920s to medium format cameras from Japan, but when the time came for the group shot, the camera that was at hand first was a Polaroid 640 Land Camera from the 70s, loaded with original Polaroid 600 film. This film has been out of production for a while, and I happened to have one of my last few film packs with me, possibly even one of the last original Polaroid 600 film packs in existence today. So what better occasion could there have been than using the last three pictures in that pack for the group shot of our first analog workshop.

We went to find the original Rollei calibration wall, where we had to improvise the above images due to not having a tripod. But it was all in the true spirit of our workshop: trust the medium, don't take it too serious and most important: enjoy photography to the max! The photographers of those three pictures: Michael Weyl, Monika Andrae and yours truly (in cooperation with several "composition helpers"). We tried to get Tilla Pe for a fourth shot but noticed that we had ran out of the valuable film.

Thanks everyone for making this workshop a memorable experience!