Rome-Milan Premium workshop report - a deep dive into fine art architecture
When: October 9- 15, 2025
From October 9 to October 15, we successfully conducted the Rome and Milan fine art architecture workshop, which included an additional bonus day at the Calatrava train station and the Bridges in Reggio Emilia. We photographed the designs of Zaha Hadid and Daniel Libeskind, alongside the classic structures of the Pantheon and the Duomo in Milan.
Lead instructor: Joel Tjintjelaar / Co-instructor: Tobi Trumpp
The participants were a mix of returning students and new students. What they all had in common was a passion and curiosity to delve deeper than just the technical aspects of the average fine art architectural workshop.
Except for the long exposure part, which only played a side role, all of the 300-page learning material, videos, and hands-on information in the field, is developed anew by me for my workshops.
With comprehensive analysis and explanations, we explain what fine art is, what fine art architecture is, and why art is important.
We didn't want to restrict ourselves to just the obvious, the practical, the superficial, and the commonplace. And we will never do.
Where everything needs to go faster and compactly, and only touch the surface, especially when it comes to learning something new, we deliberately go against it with passion and depth.
Some say it is nothing more than stubbornness to go against the grain; I say it is the strong belief in taking the time to internalize information and transform it into lasting knowledge, not just temporal facts. And that is equally important in art
To paraphrase the important conclusions of scholars of German Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and put it in the context of the Internet age:
An existential threat in today’s information-inundated world is that we are socially and economically motivated to make intellectual shortcuts. Stupidity isn’t the result of intellectual shortcomings but of intellectual shortcuts.
Our economic systems incentivize intellectual shortcuts. In an information-saturated society, intellectual surrender becomes a survival strategy. It becomes more efficient to remain uninformed about complex issues.
We go deep and wide
I go against intellectual shortcuts. With a passion. And my mission is to do this in the world of art, which has been corrupted by a flood of intellectual shortcuts, AI, and, unfortunately, many times, wrong teachings that are designed around giving you intellectual shortcuts!
We started with a 300-page reading on the relationship between human consciousness and art and the difference between fine art photography and normal photography. With the foundations of architectural compositions, when we go beyond generalizations in compositions like the rule-of-thirds or the golden ratio. B&W processing and color processing. Long exposure photography only plays a supporting role and is not the essence of fine art photography.
Finding one's own voice - the structured way
And I wrote an entirely new reading on "Finding your own voice" based on the Jungian principle of Individuation, with various practical exercises. And as far as I know, that's the first structured attempt to find one's own voice based on more than popular slogans.
And since architect Zaha Hadid plays an important role in our workshop, I wrote an analysis on how to approach her designs based on her artistic and architectural approach.
You will find below an overview of all the learning material used for the workshop in Italy, 300+ pages as of now, that forms the basis of all future Premium workshops. Learning material will never stay the same, and I make it a point to always add something new. Full stop.
Collaboration and sharing information are key
The level of the photos made by the participants started with an advantage for the returning students.
But since collaboration and sharing photographs while we were taking photographs in the field was an important part of our approach to teaching fine art photography, the newcomers caught up quickly.
After a few days, everyone reached a very high level of sophisticated architectural photography.
Just as important: the group, as always, became a collective of friends who shared a common passion. And I think it is safe to say we all enjoyed it tremendously. From early morning till late in the evening when we closed the day by having dinner together.
The workshop, therefore, is not only targeted at teaching you to create fine art architecture photographs. No, it is also aimed at making you become aware that when you only strive for intellectual shortcuts, your life becomes a shortcut as well, instead of an internalized and valuable experience. And I hope to make you aware of this through art.
Surely I am aware that this is an anomaly in a world that is 'Instagrammed,' and I might not have the popularity of more practical workshops, and I am frank when I say that I don't know how much longer I will or can do this. But I refuse to go mainstream.
If there's going to be a new Premium workshop, you will find it here. And else there will surely be a new webinar that is driven by the same spirit and passion.
I'm sharing here some of the photographs of the buildings we photographed, straight out of the camera without processing, to give you an impression.
Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana - "Colosseo Quadrato" - Rome (non-axial, 2-facade
Facade of Bocconi University - Milan (non-axial, 1 facade)
Maxxi Museum Rome by Zaha Hadid