Peter Turnley, a renowned international photojournalist and teacher of street photography will offer two new master classes in one of the world’s most visually exciting cities. There are daily lectures and presentations by Peter Turnley as well as distinguished members of the New York photographic community. During the workshop, students will also visit some of the city’s unique photography museums and exhibitions. The workshop meets daily for approx. 3-4 hours each day at Peter’s apartment in Harlem. Students are encouraged to spend the rest of each day over the 7-day workshop, which starts on a Sunday afternoon and finishes at noon the following Saturday, exploring and photographing life in the streets of what is possibly the world’s most exciting city. There are daily edit sessions of students’ work. The workshop ends with a final show with each student producing a 15-photograph picture story/essay that will be edited together with Peter Turnley on the day before the final day of the workshop. This workshop focuses on helping students overcome any anxiety or timidity in photographing people. Peter Turnley introduces a camera technique that is a time tested, proven approach for making spontaneous and authentic photographs in the Cartier-Bresson spirit of capturing the “decisive moments” in daily life. Turnley helps students find a sense of purpose in their photography-and pushes students to plug into their personal interests and passions to help them better share a visual response to their feelings and perceptions of the world around them. The workshop also pushes students to think in terms of creating a narrative with a set of photographs, and helps students find their own personal vision and photographic language. Aside from being one of the most important contemporary photojournalists in the world today, Turnley also has a vast experience at teaching workshops-prospective students are encouraged to read testimonials about his workshops here: http://www.peterturnley.com/testimonials.html
Students will be pushed to choose a theme and spend half of each day photographing that theme. Peter will provide a wide list of photographic themes. Themes can be broad such as “Impressions of New York” where a student dissects the city into two or three daily assignments covering the many distinct neighborhoods of the city. Turnley will additionally provide students with an extensive list of places and subject matter to photograph in the city. Students may also choose a much narrower theme-if they have a passion for one particular theme of life, or place in the city. It would be helpful for prospective students to look at the final shows of past workshops here: http://www.peterturnley.com/students.html
Peter spends 30 minutes daily with each student reviewing and editing the previous day’s work. Students will work towards establishing a 15-image picture story or photo essay to be shown at the final class on Saturday morning. Students are guests for a group dinner on Monday night and a final dinner on Friday evening. Peter’s apartment is at a very convenient, exciting, and safe location in central Harlem in the beautiful Lenox Terrace apartments (where NY’s governor Patterson lives) two minutes from the #2, and #3, subway stop at 135th Street and Lenox Ave. From Peter’s apartment, students can be in Times Square in 15 minutes and downtown NY in 20 minutes by subway.
Students find their own lodging during the week, but the possibilities are plentiful--including many locations in NY that are a convenient commute to and from Peter’s apartment in Harlem.
Students will shoot with a 35mm digital camera, and will decide from the outset if they will photograph in color, or convert their story to black and white. Peter Turnley is a specialist at photographing people and teaching photographic technique, especially how to approach subject matters and loose timidity and anxiety when photographing people. Students will need to bring a 35mm digital camera to the workshop and Peter Turnley encourages all students to have at least one wide angle lens such as a 28mm, 35mm, or wide angle zoom lens.
Students will have an opportunity to use the Leica M9 during the week of this course. This is an amazing opportunity to get to know this wonderful camera, and to grow as a street photographer while using a camera that is high performing, elegant, discreet, and effective for making photographs in the spirit of the "Decisive Moment"--photographs that represent spontaneity, authenticity, and reveal the magic and poetry in the streets of daily life.
Companions
This is an ideal workshop to bring along a spouse, son or daughter or partner. Non-photographic companions may join the group sessions and meals but are not involved in the critique or review sessions. Companion supplement is $150.
Location
Daily class sessions are held at Peter Turnley’s apartment in exciting Harlem, which is one of New York City’s most visually exciting and safe areas. Getting to class and then exploring the city is easy since Peter’s apartment is conveniently located one block from the 2 or 3 express subway stop at 135 St., within easy commuting distance from all parts of Manhattan.
Arrival
Try to arrive on Saturday. The first workshop session will begin at 2pm on Sunday, but arriving Saturday morning will give you an evening to get acclimated before the workshop begins on Sunday.
Departures
The workshop ends at noon, Saturday, with a show of the students’ final 15-image photo stories made during the week. Students are free to leave on Saturday afternoon, which would enable those needing to get back to work on Monday the time to do so. Those wishing to stay in the region longer are free to continue their trip Saturday afternoon.
Technology
This is a digital workshop, taught and conducted with digital cameras. If you wish to shoot film, you may do so, but we suggest you take it home for processing; to participate in critiques, you will need to use 35mm digital camera. Students should be comfortable downloading their digital images each evening to a folder and have a means for their work to be transported on a flash drive or disc for the daily review with Peter. At the start of the workshop, students will be encouraged to choose if they want to see their work in color or in black and white and they will be encouraged to stick to this choice throughout the workshop.
What to Bring
Besides your SLR digital camera equipment, bring a body of your creative work with you to share--a portfolio or CD of images. Your portfolio can be prints or digital images. The workshop will have an LCD projector and there will be a final show of all of the students' work during the final session.
Camera Gear
A digital SLR camera is required. Students may work with a high-end point and shoot camera such as a Canon G10. Two bodies are recommended with a minimum of at least one wide-angle lens such as a 17-35mm zoom, or 24mm, 28mm, 35mm, or 50mm lens. In order to shoot comfortably in low light situations, it will be preferable that students have a wide-angle lens that is relatively fast and has a wide aperture such as 1.4, 1.8, 2, or 2.8. Bring several memory cards (at least 1 gigabyte cards are recommended), extra batteries and necessary battery chargers. Your laptop should have image management software, such as Apple’s Aperture, Adobe’s Light Room or, as Peter suggests, PhotoMechanic, which can be downloaded, free, on a trial basis from http://www.camerabits.com
Make sure you have a back-up system on which to download each day’s work. This can be your laptop, a portable external hard drive storage device, flash drive, or DVDs. You will need a means of getting your edited images into a folder each day for Peter's review—flash drives are the most practical, but you can also use an external hard drive or DVD.
Meals
The first and last meals are included in the cost of the workshop. You will be a guest of the workshop for a group opening dinner on Sunday night and at the final dinner Friday night. Aside from the two group meals, breakfasts, lunches and dinners are independent although students are encouraged to join each other in local restaurants and cafes.
SPECIAL NOTE: At the time of registration a non-refundable deposit of $150 will be taken (part of tuition cost). The student will then be transferred to Peter Turnley for final billings and all future communications regarding the class.
Peter Turnley is a photojournalist renown for documenting the human condition and current events. He is also a widely acclaimed street photographer who's lived in and photographed Paris since 1978-one of the preeminent photographers of the daily life in Paris of his generation. His work is often seen in the world's most prestigious magazines: Newsweek, Harper’s, Stern, Paris Match, Geo, LIFE, National Geographic, The London Sunday Times, VSD, Le Figaro, Le Monde, and DoubleTake. He is now based both in New York and Paris.