Copyright: Jolly Schwarz
Hi, I’m Florentina Olareanu
—the face behind Golden Hour Pictures — a portrait and advertising photographer whose work sits at the intersection of documentary instinct and commercial precision.
I don't take myself too seriously, and neither should you. That's the first rule.
Now, on a more personal note: I was born and raised in Transylvania. You see, I was supposed to take over my mother's profession and become a dentist, but right before applying to med school, I had a spontaneous change of heart and moved to my now adoptive city: Vienna.
One year later I became a Political Science uni dropout, got a job as a train conductor and in parallel studied photography at the Viennese Fotoschule Wien, while also founding Golden Hour Pictures.
I won three national karate championships, jumped out of a plane twice, can deadlift 100kg and love to join Spartan races — ok, now I'm just bragging…
Anyway, what started out as a side quest turned into something I live and breathe.
Twelve-year-old Florentina, taking self-portraits in her bedroom, would not have guessed that twenty-something Florentina would end up shooting for The New York Times. She’d never shut up about it.
Since then, my images have landed in magazines and newspapers at home & abroad, a few of them on the cover and I even have my own space, where a lot of the magic happens — Studio Glasdach.
By the way, I am also a mentor at the University of Westminster, London and WoMentor, Vienna. Feel free to reach out if you're a creative in need of advice.
I care about leaving things better than I found them, mostly in very small ways. Sometimes that means picking an exhausted bee off the pavement. Sometimes it means speaking out when an injustice is happening.
I love my two cats enormously and they are the only thing I miss when I go skiing (excessively) in the Austrian Alps.
Here I am, getting ready to hit the slopes and capture a ski wedding in the Dolomites.
If you made it all the way here and want to see what I’m up to these days, feel free to follow me on Instagram.
