My fellow photographer Art Streiber, that paradox of fierce competitor and boundlessly generous friend, proposed my name to the Santa Fe Photo Workshop some time ago. So it was my recent, great pleasure to go out to Santa Fe and spend a week under dramatic summer skies, thunder and lightning, rain and sunshine, leading a workshop I called ‘The Fashion Portrait’. Those two words seem to best describe the work I do now. I don’t exist in the rarified world of fashion, where photographers live and die for the “it” girl of the moment, the shoe, the bag, the dress. But every shoot I do is with a stylist, a hairdresser, a make up artist and what I do know about fashion is called upon every shoot. But finally I hope I am making a portrait. The distinction is a fashion photograph is an image where the model is at the service of the clothes, a portrait is in some way revealing of the subject, and certainly the photographer.

The Santa Fe Photographic Workshop was created by Reid Callanan in 1990 after he’d spent 14 years with the Maine Workshop. He came to Santa Fe, seduced by the beauty of the place, thinking he’d run workshops in the summer and ski all winter. Now the workshops are year round and he tells me there’s no time for skiing.

For several reasons, it is unlike any place I have ever been. SFPW shares a campus with an order of Carmelite nuns. Two externs who deal with the world in any way needed, and 14 women who have taken a vow of silence. They live behind a high and enclosing garden wall and are essentially invisible to the world. Reid told me he occasionally retreats to their chapel during the day for a quiet moment. And on rare times has heard them singing their prayers through the screen that separates the public from the women of the convent. There is no doubt that the rigor and atmosphere of the nuns retreat pervades the feeling on campus. (As Reid, put it, not entirely joking, “they’re praying for us.”) During my week in Santa Fe, though we shot on location in a now closed penitentiary (shudder, how small the cells. I understood how a man could go in ‘bad’, and come out a wild animal), a Masonic lodge and an Arabian Stud horse ranch, and saw the requisite amount of scantily clad girls and model wildness, there is on campus an air of devoutness that cannot be denied.

The first evening the incoming workshop participants and teachers gather, Reid makes a firm point; this will be a week devoted to making photography. And he strongly discourages what we now accept as normal social behaviour, the constant sending and receiving of calls, e-mails and texts via cell phone. And after that first evening, I never saw a phone in anyone’s hand, aside from course assistants calling ahead to confirm locations and handle specific production details. Surely people made calls unseen by me, (who of us doesn’t feel momentarily exempt, “I need to get this!” and succumbs to the pressing needs of the world) but I never saw it. That will give you some notion of the seriousness of the participants and their commitment to a week of their work. I joked about this before presenting the best of our workshop’s photographs at the end of the week. But it was quite seriously disorienting, and finally wonderful, to be living again in a time before cell phones took over the world.

I had 14 students in my class from 25 years old to 60. They had come from as far away as Paris, Hawaii, Abu Dhabi, Peru. I came to love them all. Each day began with a discussion of topics I had prepared to give my class an overview of my approach to work; my list of the ‘Masters’ of Fashion Photography, Lighting with different equipment in different circumstances, the influence of Cinematography, Creating a “story”, presenting your story to clients, promoting your work, choosing a location, working in the studio, finding inspiration and the never ending challenge of remaining inspired.  We met every day at 8am after a dining hall style breakfast for the entire workshop, I critiqued their work from the day before (which they had edited down to their 8 favorite images late in the evening or earlier in the morning), I led practical demonstrations on finding my way into a shot, lighting it, developing a rapport with a model, furthering the point of the photograph, letting technique serve the image rather than dominate it. Then everyone grouped up and shot in teams rotating the photographer, the assistant, the stylist and general helper. Everyone contributed to each others work, heard their partners ambitions and did all they could to help them achieve them.

I loved my class because they succeeded, they failed, they cheered each other on, they listen to me waffle on, we had a lot of laughs and a few tears. I teased Reid at the end of the week that what he was really running was a workshop for personal transformation, thinly veiled as a photo workshop. I had complete strangers approach me in the dining room daily and share their breakthroughs with photographs they had been working on for days, (possibly years!) buoyant as children. Every evening of the week was accounted for but one; formal dinners to begin and end the week, faculty presenting their work to an audience of workshop participants and anyone in Santa Fe who might be curious to see professional’s work and hear them discuss it (a surprisingly big crowd), I had my class over to my place for dinner. Between the class wrapping at 6pm and the event every evening I had long conversations with my course assistants (two incredible staffers of SFPW, Sara Bielecki and Taylor Welch) debriefing after the day; who’d had a good day, a less than good day, how might we help? It was relentless. I’ve rarely worked so hard or had so much fun.

By the end of the week I was simultaneously exhausted and, as Reid had promised “filled up”. I barely took a picture all week but I was totally invested in my students work, so absolutely lived in photography. I did, on occasion hear my own voice and think “hey, that’s good advice, I should follow it.” I must admit my own work only rarely lives up to the lofty standards I held my students to. I really should take someone else’s workshop! Reid, a grey hound thin, gentle shaman of photography, (ably assisted by Renie Haiduk, his Director of Operations) has created a kind of heaven on earth for creative people and a close knit community of Instructors. All you have to do is make stuff.

I thought a lot during the week about what it means to teach and be taught. It is a generous act to really teach another person, to be patient, to care enough to impart what you hold dear. But it’s also an act of generosity on the part of the student, to listen and hear, to be really present to the moment, to allow another person to contribute to you. Finally it’s an act of reciprocity; it goes around and around. Everyone grows by the experience. And each one of us is the sum of all the teachers we have ever had.

This is from a profile in the New Yorker on Mikhail Baryshnikov by Joan Acocella. In this glimpse he has returned to Riga to perform in front of an audience of people he watched dance as a child, people he hasn’t seen since he defected to the west over a quarter of a century ago earlier. Even at the discounted admission rate he has negotiated with the state theatre by taking a nominal fee, ticket prices were beyond the means of the ballet people, whose average salary was around five hundred dollars a month. So he opened his first dress rehearsal to the opera house staff, pensioners and the ballet school. He told Acocella:

“All these people that I saw when I was young, they were some very good dancers or not that good dancers, some of them good actors, or some of them just beautiful women, or some of them were great character dancers, or some enthusiastic performers. I knew them by name, I knew their history. Half of those people are dead already, but the other half in their sixties or eighties, are sitting in that audience. And they’re all of them in me, in my body, in my brain. You know you learn to dance when you’re very young. And in subconsciousness you take pieces from every person. Even worst dancers have two moves, one move and you say ‘What was that? How did he do that?” And already it’s in you. That’s why it’s very moving- because you know, I owe them.”

So, if you love photography and need to reconnect with it, if you want to look again at what you’re doing, if you want to renew your relationship with your work or locate work you might care about more deeply, I urge you to check out Santa Fe Photo Workshops.

santafeworkshops.com

artstreiber.com

photo by Andrew Southam

Dear Occasional and Imaginary reader,

You may recall when I introduced this blog, I had just gone to New York in support of a promo book I had created called (An) American Dream. Though I promised not to be make this a ‘yay for me!’ kind of blog, I can’t resist the opportunity to share this big up I received from PDN Online in their ‘Promos I kept’ self promotion feature. Here, dear reader, is an excerpt from the piece.

How do clients cope with all the promotions on their desks and in their computer mailboxes? How do they decide what to keep? This month, Marissa Serritella, senior art buyer at TBWA/Chiat\Day, Los Angeles discusses her two most recent promo keepers: Chris Buck’s “Isn’t” booklet, a series of portraits of celebrity look-alikes; and Andrew Southam’s “(An) American Dream” booklet, which the photographer calls  “a classic love story of a guy and girl, a car and a highway.”

PDN: What struck you about these two promotions? What qualities do you generally look for in a promo piece?:
Marissa Serritella: I like booklets more than just individual mailer cards because they show more range. I realize this must be pricier to produce and I wouldn’t expect everyone to do something like that, but Chris’s booklet made me stop and think about it, look at it, keep it.  I liked Andrew Southam’s “(An) American Dream” booklet because of the story it told; it drew me in.

Andrew Southam, (An) American Dream

Southam produced the booklet first, then ran the images as a slideshow on his Web site (www.andrewsoutham.com).
The project was conceived out of Southam’s frustration with the limitations of commercial assignments. Over three days, he shot 5,265 images edited down to his favorite 200. He and designer Matt Taylor at Varnish Studio Inc. designed the 30-page, 50-image booklet. His agency, W Reps, created a mailing list of 500 people at agencies, record labels, TV Networks and magazines whose work indicated they would be most receptive to the project.

It paid off: Women’s Health gave him a 10-page fashion story for which they asked for him to write a treatment for the same kind of narrative as his book. Southam also just completed an ad job for a fashion designer who asked him to bring the same sense of story to the campaign.

Jessie James. Island Def Jam

One subject and two questions that came up again and again in my recent meetings in New York was “Do you shoot video?” and “Have you used the Red Camera yet.” I used to be frequently asked if I directed (I have, I hope to much more, it’s about the most fun you can have). I think what was previously driving the question was so much of my work was portraits of actors and filmic looking (I hestitate to say “cinematic” because it’s been the buzz word this last year, this years “edgy”. But I have always loved film stills and torn them for years from newspapers and magazines. The enigmatic sense of the disconnected moment, “what’s happening here? What’s going on?” often makes for the most intriguing images)

But now I think it’s more a question of economics. Clients are looking to kill two birds and have a photographer shoot stills and images for the web, increasingly an important destination for our work. My photographer friend Hugh Hamilton raises these questions:

“The video thing is coming at us like a Tsunami I think and it raises all sorts of questions – who owns the copyright being the main one. Directors don’t have copyright, photographers do – this is going to be a big problem! Who edits the footage? Who shoots it? What kind of video content do they want? Do we all turn into mini Bruce Webers (thousands of hours of footage for thirty exquisite seconds) certainly judging by some of the behind the scenes stuff I’ve seen most people have no idea what they’re doing…….as to whether you answer their questions I’d say just say yes to everything – you can always hire someone who knows how to work the camera, just like the hi end digial monsters.  Its all the post stuff that bothers me – do we all end up chained to Final Cut Pro doing the client’s bidding, or do we just dump the footage on them? Do we get an extra fee? Or do they want it for nothing? But then what if it goes mega and they own the rights? Sigh….”

I couldn’t have put it better. Strange, occasionally exciting, frequently challenging days!

Hugh Hamilton Photography

I just did the rounds with 2 heavy portfolios. It was hot, sweaty work in the last week of July, a time when no sane person would visit the city. But I always return here, where I lived for  fifteen years, as if to visit a first love. I’ve changed, the city’s changed but I will always love it. I entered the city in torrential, thrilling rain. Sixty six pounds of luggage and no umbrella. I was mostly showing my personal book project, (An) American Dream. It was universally well received. But talk’s cheap, right kids? Let’s see what happens…..Wish me luck.

Does the world need another blog? Hardly. But at the urging of some dear friends here I go. I promise this blog will not be of the relentlessly self promoting type, full of pictures of my kid (though check in here periodically to watch him grow!), a compendium of f stops and shutter speeds. Time and years have given me some perspective. And in this wintery, frightened American time of  homes and jobs lost, I’ve come to appreciate I’ve spent over twenty years working at this, doing, if not always precisely what I wanted, then pretty much. It is certainly some people’s version of a fantasy life (something I learned a year ago when I taught for the first time). It is a privileged, sometimes heartbreaking, almost always interesting life. So, dear reader, some occasional asides from the journey.

From the series I’ve previously moderated, coming up!