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Course Description - See the Light |
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WE HAVE THREE GOALS IN THIS COURSE FIRST: TO EXPLORE BOTH THE SPIRIT AND THE SPIRITUALITY OF PHOTOGRAPHY -- The reasons we photograph goes far beyond just making a good image. It's a desire for direct connection with the beauty and magic of life. This part of photography is seldom spoken about. During this workshop, we will be discussing it every day. Hopefully, by giving each other permission to share the best of what we have learned from our images, we will grow more and more comfortable with spirit of our photography and the spiritual path it opens to us. To that end, there is a short piece Dewitt wrote for one of his Basic Jones columns at the end of this page.* SECOND: TO TRAIN AND ENHANCE YOUR TECHNIQUE -- No matter where you are in your photography (beginner, advanced amateur, or professional) vision without technique is blind. No matter how beautiful the conception, a good image will not manifest without good technique. We will work with you both as a group and individually to make sure your technique is based on a solid understanding of both the camera and the computer. As Ansel Adams often said: “The negative is comparable to the composer's score and the print to its performance. Each performance differs in subtle ways.” For modern photographers, our digital negative is the camera RAW image and the print is the processing of that negative in Photoshop. Just as Ansel Adams used various darkroom techniques to bring his negatives to life, Photoshop can be used to bring our digital images to life. During the week we will focus on techniques that will move 85% of your digital negatives to 100% of their potential. Because we are expecting various skill levels in this workshop, every participant will be sent Jonathan Kingston's Photoshop CS4 Basics and Beyond DVD free of charge. All who receive it should watch it and begin to assimilate the concepts contained therein prior to coming to Molokai. Because of the large amount of material covered in this DVD, we encourage participants to come armed with questions pertaining to the material. We will give a full discussion of the basics before moving on to more advanced topics.
THIRD: TO UNLEASH YOUR CREATIVITY -- During the week, we will share myriad techniques, ideas and styles with you -- both photographic and philosophic. Each will help to push the boundaries of what you thought was possible in photography, expand your vision, and give you permission to try new things. In short, to unleash your creativity. *By Dewitt Jones: My observations about photography can be broken down into two categories: what I can explain and what I can only hint at, the latter being by far the more important. What I can explain is mostly technical. When I say I can only hint at the rest, it's not out of any desire to hide creative secrets. It's because much of my photography is done on an intuitive level and usually for reasons beyond the photograph itself. It's this non-technical part of photography that's the most important to me however and so, every 6th or 7th column, when I sit down to write some tidbit of information on how to take better photographs my fingers freeze at the keyboard and my brain starts screaming, "Stop worrying about the camera or the f stop or the filter - just look! LOOK! Ultimately it doesn't even matter if you push the shutter (it will just create another image and the world already has too many of them - and not enough silver). Just go It's thoughts like these that really begin to get at why I photograph. Someone once said "The banquet is laid though nobody comes". It's true, you know. Time and again nature has brought light and line and shape together in ways that make my heart dance and my mind rejoice. And there, alone with a sunset, or a rushing stream, or softly falling autumn leaves, I find myself saying, "This would all happen whether or not I was here to see it." The banquet is spread constantly, with no thought of whether anyone will attend. If I were receptive enough, perhaps I would see it in everything. But I'm not, so photography is one of the tools I use to help me concentrate, to help me see deeply, to block out all that is extraneous and see that which is essential. So photography to me is not an end but a means to an end. The end is a life-style, and attitude, an approach to the world that is filled with reverence and wonder. It's seeing the banquet in everything. I haven't achieved that end. I probably never will. But the moments when I've touched it let me know that it exists and confirm my commitment and direction. |
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Colored birds, Molokai, Hawaii
Waves and mist, Molokai, Hawaii