workshops – Alison Shaw Photography

Four workshops to choose from this year

EVER WANTED to do a workshop with Alison? This year, there are four locations to choose from. Alison loves teaching, and has been doing it for decades. The workshops are a great way to immerse yourself in photography for 3 to 7 days, and really get inspired creatively. You’ll learn tips and techniques, make new friends, and take some awesome photos. Click each location for more info.

DALLAS, TEXAS
May 19-21, 2016
Sun to Moon Gallery
Alison’s really excited to do her third workshop for Sun to Moon, which she co-teaches with photographer and gallery co-owner Scot Miller. There’s still time to sign up!

White Rock Lake, Dallas TX

Alison teaching in Sun to Moon Gallery, Dallas

ROCKPORT, MAINE
July 17-23, 2016
Maine Media Workshops
This is Alison’s 16th consecutive year doing this workshop. Shooting on the Maine coast is near and dear to Alison’s heart. Her family has lived in Brunswick for many years, and she really knows and loves the area.

Rockport Harbor, watching the lobster catch come in

Pemaquid Point, Maine

MARTHA’S VINEYARD
September 18-24, 2016 – FULL
Alison Shaw Photography Workshops
This is Alison’s home, and her favorite place to teach. She started teaching on the Island in 1993, and has taught every year since. Just a few spaces left in this one, so sign up soon.

Students with workshop assistant Wayne Smith, Lucy Vincent Beach

Lucy Vincent Beach

TUCSON, ARIZONA
November 6-11, 2016
Madeline Island School of the Arts – West
This will be Alison’s second time teaching in Tucson, and her third workshop for MISA. Tanque Verde is a top-notch dude ranch with great food, ambiance, and weather.

On Tanque Verde Ranch, shooting a wrangler

At Tanque Verde Ranch, shooting a wrangler

Spanish mission on the outskirts of Tucson

Sue Dawson2022-05-28T17:21:29+00:00May 6th, 2016|0 Comments

Introducing our two new workshop assistants

ALISON’S BEEN TEACHING week-long workshops on Martha’s Vineyard since the mid-1980s. They were first hosted by Atlanta’s Southeastern Center for the Arts (owner Neil Chaput then moved to Montana, where he founded Rocky Mountain School of Photography). Classes were held in a different place every year – even in Alison’s living room. Those were the days of shooting with film cameras, so Alison had an assistant who dropped off at least 50 rolls of film at the airport each morning, so they could be flown to Logan Airport, driven by courier to a lab in Boston, and rush-processed. He or she would pick up yesterday’s processed film – now slides – and bring them back to the group each day. No one knew for sure how their images would look, until they saw the slides. Students “bracketed” their shots, meaning that they shot multiple images of the same thing at different exposures, to increase the chances of getting a good one. When the slides came in, they’d be spread out on a light table, the best shots chosen, and loaded into a slide projector for group critiques.

Things are so different now…

Classtime is held at the Martha’s Vineyard Film Center, in a gorgeous theater with cushy seats and a huge screen. We host a group dinner Friday night, in a local restaurant, and a final slideshow Saturday morning that’s open to the public. All students shoot with digital cameras, so daily critiques include images you shot just hours earlier. You can see your images in-camera right away, but the technological “bar” is a lot higher these days. There’s still a learning curve for shooting, but now there’s also the digital darkroom, which is a daunting thing for many photographers. You need to have an efficient workflow, and know how to process your images digitally.

We’re excited to announce that we’ll have two assistants for our workshops this year, so that we can meet the varied needs of our students. Wayne Smith, a local photographer and surfcaster (see today’s Vineyard Gazette story about his fishing success here), will offer his many years of expertise with shooting, and managing a photo studio in Boston. Jeff Bernier, a local photographer and retired tech teacher at Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School, will teach what you need to know in Adobe Lightroom on our first morning together, and be available for tech questions the rest of the week. Long-time workshop alum and friend Jen Sayre will help with setup, errands, and all of your caffeinated beverage needs, as she’s done for several years. All of this added teaching and assistance will free Alison to do what she does best. Our team will support each student where they are, thus manifesting each student’s own best experience.

If you’ve been thinking of taking a workshop with Alison, this is a great year to do it. Grab your spot now – there’s a pdf you can download here, with details and registration info (look for the blue type).

Photo by Wayne Smith: A fisherman at Wasque, where blues are running like they did in the ’70s

Sue Dawson2022-05-29T17:33:07+00:00June 5th, 2015|12 Comments

Can’t help it but we’re creative …

A guest blog: by Eli Dagostino

FOR 25 YEARS Alison Shaw and her students have posed together for a group photo at the end of each of her fall photography workshops. Alison has always enlisted the help of her partner in crime (the workshop assistant) to take the photo. Last year was my first year assisting the internationally renowned fine-art master, and when I was put to the task of taking the traditional photo for our group, Alison made it clear that she didn’t want the shot rushed and that it definitely had to be something fun and creative.

I made the same mistake as assistants past and waited until one of the last days to take our group photo. We planned to shoot in Menemsha that evening, and I decided this would be a great time to get everyone together and quickly (without taking the students away from their shooting adventures) take THE shot. We notified the students in the morning and proceeded to put together a shot that night. It was eh….
Being someone who really appreciates a story telling portrait, I would compare the viewing experience of this “eh” shot to eating terribly executed scrambled eggs:

dock group shot

Luckily, I had the perfect opportunity to redeem myself later that evening when Alison and I were watching the sun go down. Over the jetty, we noticed how absolutely beautiful the silhouettes of the few students still shooting looked against the post-sunset sky. We looked at each other for one split second and it was as if the same idea popped into both of our can’t-help-it-but-we’re-creative heads. With some polite but inspired screaming we beat the fast approaching darkness and got all of the students to line up on the jetty, and pretend that they were either shooting the sunset or each other. I was about 150 feet away from the students. Competing with the loud rolling waves of the choppy Vineyard Sound, it was Alison’s job to yell messages to everyone regarding where to move and how to pose. The result of our efforts attempting to recreate what popped into both of our heads speaks for itself:

oct2012workshopblog

I was honored to be asked back to assist both workshops this year and was excited to make a tradition of these creative group photos, to help the students bring back their fond memories of our week together. Alison half challenged me to top what was created against the fiery sky last year, and with a smile I agreed that it was a challenge that I was surely up for. I pitched a couple of options, and together we were most inspired to honor the amazing space that we were newly working in (The Martha’s Vineyard Film Center). Although the plan was full of unanswered questions, we were thrilled to embark upon the photographic adventure together.

The photo option Alison and I agreed upon took some serious pre-production thinking and had to be executed with the utmost patience. I wanted the photograph to highlight the new space as well as each individual’s unique personality and attitude towards their photography. I spent the first six months of this year shooting carefully lit environmental portraits as a part of a project that I called The 365 Project. Combining both my creative and technical skills, I knew how to coax my subjects into emoting the way I wanted them to and how to execute a clean composite consisting of 17 original raw files all masked out onto a clean plate/pre-shot background. In other words, I shot each person individually (setting up lighting for each one), then shot the empty Film Center, and put it all together in Photoshop:

sept2013blog

The September 2013 group photo was such a great take-home bonus for the students, but it also gave them all an opportunity to learn how to shoot better portraits. So many of the students I’ve helped teach come to the Alison Shaw Workshop with a background in “people photography” expecting to refine their fine-art eye with the help of Alison. Showing them how I approach the craft of portraiture shines new light on what might’ve gotten old for them, and I hope that my future group photos will inspire students just as much as this year’s did. I am so lucky to spend two of my fall weeks with Alison teaching and hope that the opportunity will be offered to me for years to come.

All photos by Eli Dagostino

Sue Dawson2022-05-28T17:57:30+00:00October 2nd, 2013|2 Comments

September workshop on Martha’s Vineyard

by Alison Shaw

I JUST FINISHED TEACHING my September workshop (otherwise known as “photo boot camp”) on the Vineyard. It was a great and talented group of sixteen students, my trusty assistant Donna Foster, and our “shadow” Jonathan Hart, a Vermont-based photographer who spent the week observing.

DAY 1, Sunday:
7pm: Meet-and-greet session at the Mansion House, fueled by Chilmark Chocolates and red wine. Jen Sayre broke her own record for the most Alison Shaw MV workshops – she’s taken six workshops with me on the island since 2003. She gets re-inspired each time, and we love having her.

DAY 2, Monday:
5:30am – We met at Owen Park Beach in the pitch dark. Most students were unsure how to use their cameras in daylight, much less in total darkness. Among other things they contended with: finding coffee at 5am; shooting on “Manual” for the first time in years; learning what shutter speed “Bulb” represents; realizing that Auto-focus doesn’t work in the dark; and discovering that overcast conditions at dawn produce blue photos.

4:30pm – Headed for Lucy Vincent Beach via the Granary Gallery. When we arrived at the beach I couldn’t believe my eyes – there were the biggest waves I’d seen at that beach since the “No-Name” storm of October 1991. Normally I don’t shoot much on workshops, since I’m too busy helping my students. In this instance I simply couldn’t resist getting my camera out and I photographed for a couple of hours, trying unsuccessfully to stay clear of fast-moving waves, and periodically stopping to answer questions and offer photo tips. Most of my advice concerned deciding whether to freeze a crashing wave with a fast shutter speed, or to let the water go silky smooth with a slow shutter speed. We departed the beach at nightfall, wet but happy.

Henry Olds at Lucy Vincent Beach

Ben Linsky at Lucy Vincent Beach

DAY 3, Tuesday:
5:30am – Edgartown Lighthouse was our destination on the second morning. The Derby fishermen arriving in their pickup trucks at 6am were miffed to find all of their parking spaces taken by a bunch of out-of-state SUVs. The best view of the lighthouse was from across Eel Pond, the lighthouse silhouetted against the dawn sky, and the shutter timed perfectly to capture the red light in the lighthouse. Harold Green discovered for the first time the intense orange of the dawn sky juxtaposed against the brilliant deep blue of the water – he was grinning from ear to ear as if he’d won the lottery, and didn’t seem to mind the fact that he’d only been getting about five hours of sleep a night.

Mid-day – Each day for the rest of the week, mid-morning to mid-afternoon was spent in the classroom editing and critiquing the day’s images. I love this part of the day, since I am often so amazed by some of the photos my students have created – things that I never saw, or never would have dreamed up myself. It’s incredibly inspiring and definitely jump-starts my own creative juices if I’m in a rut. I believe in the old adage that a teacher learns as much from his/her students as vice versa. My critiquing tools of choice are my cropping angles and my laser pointer. I must have used my cropping tools for one out of three images on Day 1 of critiquing – the lesson students learn is that they’ve often got a picture within their picture, so they need to come in closer to their subject in order to extract the final image.

4:30pm – Sunset at Menemsha. It was the first time I’d seen the devastation caused by the dramatic early summer fire that destroyed the Coast Guard boathouse, dock and several boats. It was lucky the wind wasn’t blowing in the opposite direction at the time, thus sparing all of the fishing shacks and my favorite picturesque fishing boat, the “Little Lady.” Menemsha is a tricky location to photograph since there is so much STUFF everywhere you look. I always encourage my students to leave their gear in the car and spend a lot of time just looking before they even think about taking their first shot. A mini-tailgate party of smoked bluefish and white wine gave them enough sustenance to keep shooting until dark, an impressive feat considering the hours we’ve been keeping.

DAY 4, Wednesday:
5:30am – We returned to Lucy Vincent Beach for sunrise. During a workshop, I love going to this location for both a late afternoon and an early morning shoot – it’s like discovering an entirely new beach. Actually, the more you go back to the same location again and again the more you realize that the conditions are ALWAYS different – that the weather, the wind, the clouds, the humidity, the tide, the night sky, and light never ever repeat themselves exactly. Even if the conditions are close to the same, it’s the fine art photographer’s job to create a new photo out of the same raw material. I’ve been photographing Lucy Vincent Beach since the late 1970s, and each time I try to interpret it differently.

4:30pm – For a change of pace, and in case anyone was feeling “beached out,” we visited the Farm Institute at Katama Farm in Edgartown. This is a working educational farm, with just the right amount of grit, and chock full of a multitude of farm animals who either ran for cover or posed for our cameras. Jim Linsky captured two of the weirdest and yet most successfully creative animal photos I’ve ever seen, by using an interesting vantage point and crop, in conjunction with a fish-eye lens.

Katama Farm Turkeys by Jim Linsky

Katama Sheep by Jim Linsky

DAY 5, Thursday:
5:30am – I tried my best to convince everyone that they really ought to take the morning off, but to no avail – this was one seriously hard-core group. So we met in the dark, as usual. There were a few skunks determined to befriend us, but we finally convinced them to go bother some bird watchers instead. We shot the full moon as it set behind the bandstand in Ocean Park. Funny, you usually hear about the rising of the full moon rather than the setting – maybe it’s because most people are still sound asleep at this hour.

3pm – We visited the Alison Shaw Gallery in the Arts District of Oak Bluffs, where my partner and co-gallery owner Sue Dawson made everyone feel welcome and studio manager Claire Cain introduced them to the mysterious inner workings of the upstairs studio. Then back to the Mansion House to meet individually with students – this is a great time to address specific questions and topics, since I have each student set their own agenda for our meetings. While I was in the classroom, I sent the rest of them out to shoot on their own, but I’m guessing there was a lot of napping and/or shopping (just kidding) going on as well.

DAY 6, Friday:
5:40am (I let them sleep in a little since the sun is rising a few minutes later every day now. . . .) – We met on the beach in front of the Black Dog Tavern, in time to see the 6am ferry Nantucket pull out of its slip. Vineyard Haven Harbor is usually a pretty sheltered early morning location, but we were dealing with an overabundance of wind all week. The same wind that made for dramatic conditions at Lucy Vincent Beach made for more challenging conditions on the harbor – for one thing, wind pretty much kills the dreamy reflections of boats and docks. Once the sun reached the horizon we gravitated towards the Gannon and Benjamin Boat Yard and photographed the boatbuilding shed. Our early morning shoots culminate in an excursion to one of my favorite breakfast spots, in this case the Artcliff Diner. We always manage to eat like truck drivers after our long mornings of shooting.

5pm – Friday evening was time to kick back and enjoy the fruits of our labor, and abandon shorts, t-shirts and sneakers in favor of more fashionable attire. Our social hour and dinner at Zephrus was followed by the Friday Night Show, which celebrates the best of the week’s work. Donna put together a great show, complete with soundtrack, and we even had a few guests to cheer us on. It’s a real high seeing my students’ work on the big screen.

DAY 7, Saturday:
9am (how civilized!) – We met at the Farmers’ Market in West Tisbury, which was as much a morning of socializing and wolfing down eggrolls and popovers, as it was of shooting. Our farmers’ market has to be one of the most picturesque anywhere in the country, and the vendors are incredibly tolerant of my little flock of photographers – as soon as the tripods appear they know I won’t be far behind. The workshop ended back at the Mansion House, with lots of hugs, a few tears, and promises to keep taking photos and to stay in touch.

POST-WORKSHOP:
Terry Wiechman began an email thread that has kept the group connected, and Andy Nixon created a Flickr group for the September workshop. Go team! And I finished the week so jazzed that I was possessed by the desire to blog. It’s a little embarrassing, since my blog has lain dormant since one feeble entry in April 2009. And no, I haven’t been out shooting like I promised. But then again, I do have a book to write and an October workshop to prepare for, so I’ve got a good excuse, right?

Sue Dawson2022-05-28T19:33:02+00:00September 30th, 2010|0 Comments