2009

This workshop is currently full.

Revitalize your photography while exploring your relationship to your subject, your camera and yourself. This will be a unique opportunity to rethink our expectations of what it means to 'see'. We will work on cultivating simplicity and making more insightful photographs, supporting the notion that a photograph is not 'taken' but 'made'. We learn to become better photographers by becoming more in touch with our inner selves and then use that awareness to clarify our approach and connection with our subject; whether it's a person, place, or thing. We will also learn about natural light, composition, depth-of-field and exposure issues. Much practical advise will be given but more importantly you will practice how to use this information to make more powerful images.

Revitalize your photography while exploring your relationship to your subject, your camera and yourself. Through photo exercises, assignments and daily field trips participants will learn to deepen their visual awareness and self expression while clarifying their approach, making their image making both more personal and more meaningful.

Explore beautiful Tuscany, Italy while improvinging and revitalizing your photography while exploring your relationship to your subject, your camera and yourself. Through photo exercises, assignments and daily field trips participants will learn to deepen their visual awareness and self expression while clarifying their approach, making their image making both more personal and more meaningful.

This is not about making ‘pretty’ pictures or ‘postcard’ like records of one’s travels. It is about making a deeper, more authentic, connection to the land and learning to express that connection in our photography. We will be using the island, the water and ourselves to convey an emotional experience into a visual one. It will be about making, not taking, photographs that matter by nourishing a deepening connection to one’s heart and bringing that awareness into our photo making process. We will work on giving our photos more layers of meaning to make stronger, more powerful images.

Revitalize your photography while exploring your relationship to your subject, your camera and yourself. Through photo exercises, assignments and daily field trips participants will learn to deepen their visual awareness while clarifying their approach, making their image making both more personal and more meaningful.

This highly personalized workshop, custom designed for a very small group, is a unique opportunity to look closely at your own creative process, develop ways to deepen your vision and find new paths for creative growth. We will explore the notion of what it means to be lost or stuck and how this fertile ground can be used to explore who you are as an artist and what your artwork is about and how you can use this new information to move your career or artistic direction forward in a more way or intentional way.

We invite you to the mysterious, exotic Mayan world of Guatemala, a land where the indigenous live as they have for centuries. The colonial city of Antigua, the artistic center of Guatemala, will be our home base and a lovely, cultural introduction to outdoor markets, music, food, local villages and friends. We'll spend a few days exploring small towns around majestic Lake Atitlan, near Panajachel, which Lonely Planet hails as “the most beautiful lake in the world”.

Japan! For many photographers it is the ultimate destination: exotic, yet screechingly modern, and filled with photo opportunities. Just the thought of it conjures up images of kimonos and sumo wrestlers, snow on Mt Fuji, office workers scurrying about in navy blue suits, and a sushi shop on every corner. But wait....is there another aspect of Japan you might want to explore with your camera, one that lies right beneath the surface?

2010

This workshop is a unique opportunity to look closely at your own creativity, develop ways to deepen your vision and find new paths or creative outlets for your photography. With a smaller than normal maximum class size (8) we will explore the notion of what it means to be lost, directionless or stuck, and how this fertile ground can be used to explore who you are as an artist and reawaken what your artwork is about and how you can use the new information to move your art or career forward.

This is not your parents Hawaii. This is an incredible journey to the old authentic and indigenous Hawaii and not the pre-packaged tourist version. Even if you've been to Honolulu and Waikiki on the Island of Oahu please join us because you have not seen or experienced anything close to this Hawaii. Some of the highlights will be a trip to the lava flow on the island's active volcano, shoots on black sand beaches, spectacular waterfalls, Akiko's sense of humor and infectious laugh, wandering through old plantation villages, Buddhist temples, ancient stone spiritual grounds and meeting and hanging out with with some of the islands many artists and photographers. But the best of all are the people of Big Island, who still embrace and live the "Aloha Spirit" of old Hawaii. This is a trip you will not forget and will exceed all expectations of what Hawaii is really like.

Join us for the adventure of a lifetime as we explore using our photography in service to local communities in Nairobi and Naivasha, Kenya. This is not an &lsqup;African Safari’ trip (wrong time of year—so there will be very few tourists) but a deeper richer more culturally sensitive trip into the heart and spirit of real African life. This will be a unique opportunity to develop and pursue a deeply personal documentary project leaving preconceptions and misleading media stereotypes behind, with the guidance of Doug and Elizabeth and the support of our African guides and mentors, as well as new friends met along the way. Not just a photo workshop but an opportunity to use your art in service to the communities we visit while creating a strong documentary project of your own choosing.

Join us for an unforgettable journey to the spiritual heart of Indonesia. Bali is an island of artists and is the only Hindu island in the Muslim chain of islands that make up Indonesia. We will visit Temples, small villages and the rural countryside. The first part of the trip we will be staying near one of Bali’s pristine ocean beaches at a beautiful small luxury resort with much to explore and photograph nearby. Then we move to an amazing yoga retreat outside of Ubud, Bali’s artist’s capital where we will be staying in a beautiful Yoga Retreat surrounded by lush gardens and fragrant exotic flowers. We will have daily field trips to photograph the beautiful people, culture, rituals and architectural gems that make Bali one of the most beautiful and mysterious places on earth. On this trip we will try and slow down and tune in to the rhythm of the people and place that make this island so unique rather than rushing around to ‘see everything’. This will truly be a once in a lifetime experience. We are also limiting the class size to only 8 students so there is ample one-on-one time with the instructor and minimal disturbance to the people and culture we will be photographing.

We will meet in Interior, South Dakota, for a five-day workshop in and around the Badlands National Park. This remote, sacred region with its sculpted soil, sweeping vistas and extraordinary light is an ideal dramatic background for figurative image making. We will work collaboratively with our models to connect this sacred land to our own individual vision. We will also work on maximizing light potential, using exposure as a creative control and how to use available light more effectively to create more powerful images with mood and personal style.

Revitalize your photography while exploring your relationship to your subject, your camera and yourself. This will be a unique opportunity to rethink our expectations of what it means to 'see'. We will work on cultivating simplicity and making more insightful photographs, supporting the notion that a photograph is not 'taken' but 'made'. We learn to become better photographers by becoming more in touch with our inner selves and then use that awareness to clarify our approach and connection with our subject; whether it's a person, place, or thing. We will also learn about natural light, composition, depth-of-field and exposure issues. Much practical advise will be given but more importantly you will practice how to use this information to make more powerful images.

How do we expand the boundaries of our vision? How do we find the unique in the commonplace? How to acknowledge a sense of familiarity and connection in the unfamiliar? "Zen and the Art of Photography" provides a unique opportunity to rethink our expectations of what it means to 'see'.

Revitalize your photography while exploring your relationship to your subject, your camera and yourself. Through photo exercises, assignments and daily field trips participants will learn to deepen their visual awareness while clarifying their approach, making their image making both more personal and more meaningful.

Other opportunities

Custom workshops can be created and held at our TRADE RIVER RETREAT CENTER located north of St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin, a relaxing 90 minute drive from the Twin Cities. This beautiful, very private, north woods setting rests on the banks of the Trade River, a designated protected waterway. The grounds are kept in a natural state, and the workshop center itself has been built not only for maximum energy efficiency, but also with much care in providing a safe, non-toxic, all natural environment.

See some student photography from Vision Quest Photo Workshops.