Meet Ben Long for a weekend of composition practice in lovely St. Louis in this three-day intensive workshop. St. Louis is a city rich with history, architecture, and Mississippi River culture making it an ideal laboratory for everything from landscape photography to street shooting. With its broad variety, St. Louis provides great opportunity for exploring many compositional challenges. Through lecture, one-on-one instruction and shooting, we’ll discuss and explore many compositional ideas and examples before going out to try them on the streets. Afterwards we’ll cover some important post-production skills and practices as we select images for group analysis. Online photo sharing sites and forums can be a nice way to get feedback on your images but virtual feedback is a poor substitute for actual in-person group critique and we’ll conduct two of these during this workshop.

Schedule - 
Classes starts Friday evening at 5pm and will end between 4 and 5pm on Sunday.

The workshop begins on Friday night with a lecture and discussion of a range of compositional techniques and ideas. During this initial meeting I’ll learn what type of shooting you like to do and we’ll work together to determine locations in the city suited to your chosen subject matter. If you like, I can offer you an assignment for the weekend. Taking on an assignment can be a great way to get past creative blocks or to push yourself out of your photographic comfort zone.

On Saturday morning you’ll head out on your own to take advantage of the morning light, and then meet in the classroom at ten for a quick post-production lesson in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. We’ll look at Lightroom’s image review tools and other tricks for easing the culling and selection of images. This is a chance to get one-on-one post-production help as you review your images and choose images for the afternoon’s group critique, which begins after lunch. While the idea of a group critique can sound scary, I believe you’ll find these sessions to be enlightening and fun. You’ll not only learn about your own work – what’s working and what can be improved – but you might find yourself surprised by what you learn from looking at the work of other students.

The day will end with another quick Composition lecture followed by some simple assignments and shooting in the afternoon light. 

On Sunday we’ll repeat the process – shooting in the morning, followed by critique and evaluation in the afternoon before we wrap up the workshop with a discussion of further exercises and studies you can engage in to continue to further expand your photographic skill.

This class is suitable for all skill levels, though I’m assuming that you are already comfortable with the basics of shooting and exposure. That said, I’m happy to help you work out any technical concerns you might have.

I never get tired of discussing composition, and St. Louis is a great playground for exploring many compositional ideas. Class will be held in Forest Park  one of the largest urban parks in the U.S. At 1,300 acres it’s 500 acres larger than New York’s Central Park. This beautiful location provides lots of shooting opportunities while its central location makes it a great jumping off point for travel into other parts of St. Louis.

What you’ll need - camera of your choice; laptop computer running your choice of image editing software (demonstrations will be conducted using Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Lightroom); weather-appropriate clothing; good walking shoes.

Travel and lodging not included but we can provide recommendations for places to stay. 

Limit 12 students