Photography Presentation
Santa Fe Photographic Workshops
Mon, Nov 9, 7:30pm
Teatro Bellas Artes
Hernández Macías 75
Free

This week at the Santa Fe Workshops
By Françoise Lemieux

Photo by David Hobby

Are you addled by apertures? Stumped by shutter speeds? Have you been using your digital SLR as an overpriced point-and-shoot?

Jennifer Spelman can help. In Basics of Digital Photography, the emphasis is on mastering your image-making machine, which will hone your skills, amplify your creative possibilities and let your SLR lead the life for which it was destined. 

Designed as a hands-on user’s manual, the course provides everything participants need to know to get the most out of their cameras. With San Miguel as a backdrop, Spelman will guide her group through the jungle of SLR features. She’ll also help out with aesthetic stuff, like composition and lighting. Participants will learn to make more interesting and powerful images in an energetic and supportive atmosphere, and they’ll return home with a body of work that reflects their new expertise.

A freelance editorial and documentary photographer, Spelman teaches with the Workshops as well as with National Geographic Expeditions. Her work has been exhibited in many galleries and published in Food & Wine, The Sun, B & W, Rangefinder, and Local Flavor magazines. Her website is: www.jenniferspelman.com 

Say you’re faced with a stellar photo op, but the ambient light’s not quite right. What do you do? If you’re like me, you pull out your flash, twiddle some dials, cross your fingers, then hit the button. What results is a painfully anemic crime-scene style photo, a deep mistrust of your flash unit, and a new fondness for blur.

Not quite what you’re going for? Join David Hobby in Dancing with the Ambient: Using Small Flashes. Students will learn how to really understand available light, then how to control and finesse it by combining that with an artful bit of flash. And they’ll learn to do all this on location—with relatively inexpensive off-camera flashes to boot. Working with models in interesting spots around town, participants will get loads of hands-on practice and learn to problem-solve difficult lighting situations on the fly.

During two decades as a newspaper photojournalist, Hobby became proficient in the creative use of small flashes. Three years ago, he launched Strobist.com, an encyclopedic archive of articles on lighting. More than two million people have since consulted the site to learn his tricks. When he’s not blogging, Hobby works as a freelance editorial and commercial photographer and teaches lighting workshops all over the world. See http://davidhobby.zenfolio.com/. 

Capture San Miguel and surroundings in a way that no mere tourist can. Join National Geographic photographer David Alan Harvey on a photo safari in National Geographic Expeditions Photography Workshop: San Miguel.

The workshop melds photo instruction and critique with organized excursions and photo assignments. Highlights include a unique walking tour of San Miguel, a field trip to a nearby hacienda and working rancho, a visit to downtown Guanajuato and a foray to the ruins of Pozos to photograph pre-Hispanic dances.

Harvey discovered photography at the age of 11, when he bought a used Lexica with his paper route savings. Since then, he has shot more than 40 essays for National Geographic magazine, and published two major books, Cuba and Divided Soul. In 2004, he created Burn magazine, which bills itself as “a platform for emerging photographers” ( www.burnmagazine.org ). When he isn’t not shooting magazine assignments, Harvey creates books, plans exhibits, makes prints for collectors and does the occasional advertising shoot. Check out www.davidalanharvey.com. 

This week, Spelman, Hobby and Harvey present work at the Bellas Artes Theater. The presentation is free so don’t miss it!

Françoise Lemieux is a scribbler and shutterbug based in San Miguel.