The summer excitement continued to blaze ahead last week, with students in filmmaking and photography taking over the campus for the week. Plus, it was the Union Fair!
We were excited to welcome Rashod Taylor to campus as an instructor for the very first time! Rashod was the winner of the 2021 Arnold Newman Prize for New Directions in Photographic Portraiture, which is dedicated to photographers expanding the boundaries of portraiture in photography, and is administered by Maine Media every year. Rashod’s workshop, Connecting with People through Portraiture, continued to demonstrate his absolute brilliance in the realm of portrait photography by guiding students through different methods of building rapport with their subjects.
Also in the Photo department, we welcomed back beloved workshop leader and award-winning photographer Aline Smithson for her workshop Intention, Expression, and Articulation: The Photographer’s Trifecta. Students worked cooperatively to hone in on their photographic work, who they are as artists, and how they present themselves to the world.
Brenton Hamilton’s Tri Color Gum students were blessed to be in his last on-campus workshop before he departs Maine Media. Read more about Brenton’s story here. This sold-out workshop wrapped up decades of alternative process instruction by Brenton here on campus, exploring the possibilities of creating digital negative color separations from digital files or color film.
Over in the Sound Stage, we were – unsurprisingly – very impressed by the team of students in Paul Taylor’s Steadicam Workshop, a classic crash-course workshop that Paul has taught here on campus for many years. (Miss last week’s workshop? Don’t worry – Paul will be back in September!)
Students in The Director’s Craft with Peter Werner consisted of emerging film directors interested in the craft, process, and techniques of directing. Peter guided them through tools and techniques of leading, inspiring, managing, and directing a cast and crew’s creative energies in order to realize their own cinematic vision.
Anna Graham stuck around on campus after her first week of workshops [link to July 22 news article] for a second week to teach Experimental & Alternative Filmmaking Processes. Her students had the chance to work in 16mm filmmaking with an emphasis on experimental practices and techniques through a hands-on, DIY approach.
And finally, we welcomed our third and final batch of high school students to campus for the 2-Week Scholastic Portfolio Development workshop with fabulous instructor Kari Wehrs. These young photographers will be working to hone their photographic portfolio and prepare themselves for the wide world of photography – both artistically and professionally.
