About the Course

Join a master of the photo essay to explore the magic that transforms loosely defined ideas into powerful photo essays. A photo essay is a collection of images, based on a theme, which are unified in telling a story and conveying the authors point of view. While some essays are for documentary or commercial applications, just as many are more personal or artistic in nature. Essays can be linear stories showing character evolution, for example within a family, team, neighborhood or community. Or they can be portfolios of images exploring topics that are unified by the photographer's style of photography. These can be as varied as architecture, self portraiture, social commentary, environmental degradation or ethnic rituals. The choices are endless.

The class will touch on how to transform your ideas for a photo essay into a tightly defined, coherent collection of dramatic, story telling images. With digital imaging technology we will also explore alternative presentations such as pairing images, sequencing images and other non-traditional presentation formats. You will learn to write a proposal for a photo essay, the first step towards funding, exhibiting and publishing a project. Wells will share examples of proposals that have earned him exhibits, publication and grants.

While many photo essays are initially made for publication, some are now made for use in museum exhibitions or for special interest groups. The class starts with introductions and the instructor showing his work, highlighting the different kinds of essays he has produced for different uses. The class goes on to detail and define how essays are collections of images that are stylistically and/or thematically unified in telling a story.  This will be followed by a critique of the students existing work. The work of master photographers and photo essayists will be reviewed in class.

After Monday's intro to the mechanics of the photo-essay, students will produce a photo-essay (or part of a larger photo-essay to be completed after the class.) Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday morning will be spent out photographing. Those same afternoons will be spent in the lab processing your images, which will be followed by a late afternoon critique of student's work-in-progress. Friday morning will be a partial shoot, followed by a mid-day lab session and one last final critique. The future directions to take with the projects will be discussed then. Friday afternoon is open lab time to finish projects, compare notes, etc.

Wells will work one on one at least once with each student when shooting. Students will also improve their editing skills through a series of editing exercises. Finally, we will discuss how to establish a market for your photo-essay by researching what types of publications, museums and organizations might use your work and how to work with them through the entire shooting, editing and publication/exhibition process.

Participants should bring a small portfolio with them to the course. The ideal portfolio consists of:

• Ten of your very best images.
• Photocopies or other reproductions of examples of imagery that inspires you. (It may be paintings or photos or…)
• Another ten to twenty images that are unified on a single theme. These images may or may not be the seeds of a photo-essay. These are guidelines, not absolute requirements.

Who Should Attend?

This course will blend lecture and field photography to help you learn to create remarkable photo-essays, along with time spent in the digital darkroom lab to edit and optimize your images. You should already be comfortable with the basic functions of your camera equipment, including the use of manual exposure. You should also have an understanding of the workflow for basic image optimization in Photoshop.

Schedule-At-A-Glance

Here is an outline of the topics to be covered so you'll have an idea of what to expect: