photography as a means of discovery

St. Anthony of Padua Parish Church, Dixon, NM.

There are many reasons to make photographs—to remember, to express, to document, to illustrate, to create, to influence, to heal. For me, one of the most important reasons to make photographs is to discover and learn—to see things I might otherwise miss, to observe more closely and, hopefully, to gain a better understanding of places, people, plants and the world around us. It’s why I named this newsletter Seeing More Deeply.

This concept of discovery lies at the heart of my work and my workshops. Last week, during An Intimate Portrait of Place at Santa Fe Workshops, seventeen of us wandered backroads through prairie, desert and mountain landscapes, trying to gain a better understanding of how the Native American, Hispanic and Anglo people came together to create the unique culture of the region we know today as northern New Mexico.

We visited cliff dwellings, petroglyphs, Ancient Puebloan ruins, Spanish missions, ranches, pueblos, historic Santa Fe and the Rio Grande. We looked at the land, what grows there, food, religion, architecture, artifacts and more. We baked in the sun and got drenched in the rain. It was all good and satisfying. We also delved into photography as a form of storytelling and discovered how many can photograph the same subject yet produce entirely different images because we each see the world around us in a different way.

If you’d like to see some of the photographs made by the class, CLICK HERE for a short slide show. Thank you to everyone in the workshop for sharing your images and for making this a great week!

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Upcoming workshop and online classes. Click on class name for details.

Photographing Close to Home. Six weeks online beginning August 4. A deep dive into the art of photographing place with a focus on the place you know best and can photograph most easily and often.

Photographing Plants in the Studio. Four weeks online beginning August 13. Capture the personality of flowers from your garden or local market by photographing them in a simple, flexible (and even portable) home studio.

An Intimate Portrait of Place: Coastal Maine. October 6-10 at Maine Media Workshops in Rockport, ME. Explore the natural, built and historic sites of Mid-Coast Maine in this weeklong, intensive field workshop.