The LensWork Road Show 2011
Seminars
There may be no better way to learn something as complex and flexible as photography than by watching, trying, and then asking questions. Seminars and workshops are the perfect venue for such an intense learning experience.
As Brooks travels the US and Canada during the LensWork Road Show, he will be offering 1-day — and occasionally longer — seminars on a variety of topics. As a long-time advocate of photographic workshops — both as an attendee and as an instructor — Brooks' experiences have made him one of the most sought-after seminar and workshop leaders in photography.
These (mostly) 1-day seminars are a great way to get a handle on some of the most stubborn challenges facing photographers and their creative work. Making images is just the start; the finished work of thirty years ago is now the starting point for today’s exhibit, publication, or presentation. That is the focus of these seminars.
Co-sponsors
Our seminars are offered both as independent affairs as wells as in partnership with other groups, organizations, and institutions. If your group would like to work with us to co-sponsor an event, just let us know and we'll do our best to coordinate our schedule with your needs. Email roadshow@lenswork.com or call 800-659-2130.
Details
Seminars will be held in locally available spaces depending on the venue. In some cases, we'll be in hotel conference rooms; in co-sponsored events, we will be in various locations. Prices may vary, but we will try our best to keep the tuition for these events in the $100-$150 range as location expenses allow.
Our current list of scheduled events is available on the Events and Location Schedule page.
Seminar topics
Our seminar topics cover a wide variety of the spectrum of photography and the creative process, but ones not typically covered by other workshop programs. The world does not need another workshop on the Zone System, or a Photoshop class — so our seminars focus on issues that others leave untouched. Bringing his unique skills and experience both as a photographer and as a publisher, Brooks zeroes in on topics of concern to photographers who need information and the wisdom of experience to help them along their own creative path.
Finding an Audience for Your Work
This seminar focuses on ways to find and build an audience for your fine art photography. Topics include: The different kinds of audience; developing more than one audience; levels of involvement; why people buy artwork and how to build a paying audience; media and your projects; editions and the thorny question of limiting your work; the role of publishing and original artwork.
Book Publishing
From commercial publishing to vanity press to print-on-demand, the world of book publishing is fraught with quicksand just waiting for naïve photographers and their bulging wallets. In this seminar, we discuss various strategies and processes to turn your pile of prints into a book — without breaking the bank, or at the very least without wasting any time or money on the pitfalls that have plagued so many photographers. Includes an overview of the book distribution industry, printing and binding, preparing your work for publication, and what to expect once your book is printed.
Preparing Your Images for Commercial Printing -
Grayscale, Duotone, or CMYK
This is a technology-based seminar to focus specifically on the thorny issue of image preparation for commercial printing. One of the most frequently asked questions we receive is about the duotone printing we use in LensWork. This seminar is a step-by-step tutorial on how to prepare your work for commercial printing as well as how to work the press operators at the press check to ensure your finished book looks as good as you hope.
Folios
When Brooks invented the concept of the "folio" to present his personal work, he had no idea that this idea would grow to be so popular amongst fine art photographers. In this seminar, Brooks shares not only the evolution of the idea, but the process and alternatives for creating your own folios — including methods for one-off folio cover production. Lots and lots of samples will be available for viewing and discussion.
Image and Text
As soon as you decide to take your fine art photographs off the wall and present them in a book, a PDF, a slideshow, a web page, a Flash presentation, or a folio, you will need to address the issue of text to accompany your work. Titles, captions, descriptions, essays, or even just the simple introduction/artist's statement require careful crafting — verbal and text skills often a challenge to artists more used to visual means of communication. This seminar explores all of the above and provides insight on how to add these important components to your photographic project.
Editing, Sequencing, and Storytelling
Although the days of "greatest hits" photography are not over, there are more and more photographers who are exploring the multi-image possibilities in today's new media. Add the advent of digital cameras with the explosion in the number of images we are making and need to edit into a finished project and the challenges of editing, sequencing, and storytelling become a necessary new skill. Brooks' personal work has been exclusively dealing with these issues since the mid-1970s. As the editor of LensWork, he's published some 500+ projects of the work of other photographers for which his task as editor is precisely to edit and sequence the project for greatest impact. He brings his considerable experience from both of these areas to this seminar.
Finding the Project
One of the most common problems that plague photographers is the persistent question, What should I photograph? In this seminar, the focus will be on finding and developing projects — often from the clues that can be found in your existing work. Discussions will include looking at participants portfolios and using them as springboards to project-oriented work. There will also be an emphasis on defining what kind of finished presentation might be best for a given project and even how to massage a project for a targeted audience.
PDF Publishing
With years of experience producing our media-rich, PDF-based publication LensWork Extended, there are few people in the world more experienced or knowledgeable about PDF publishing than Brooks Jensen. In this seminar, Brooks presents a walk-through of the process from image preparation to layout and design to PDF creation and the use of media. Distribution of digital publications — CDs, DVDs, downloads, iPad publication, etc. — will also be a topic of concern.
Audio, Video, and Other Media for Photographers
We've all spent years developing our photographic skills and craft. But in the new media of digital publishing, there is a lot more than just images that need our attention. In this seminar, the focus will be on recording and post-processing audio and video for use in PDFs, web pages, and other digital presentations. This is not a master course on media, but rather a practical introduction whose purpose is to get you up to speed on the basics so you can start developing media for use in your projects.
For a listing of locations and currently scheduled seminars, visit our Events and Location Schedule page for currently scheduled Road Show seminars. |
