Workshops
Join Brenton Hamilton for a 10-week summer intensive exploring historic photographic processes—from albumen prints and dry plate negatives to advanced cyanotypes and photo-based collage—with four weeks of personalized mentoring to deepen your practice.
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Embark on a transformative 10-week intensive, immersing yourself in historic photographic processes under the expert guidance of Brenton Hamilton. This unique opportunity takes place on the stunning midcoast of Maine, where the beauty of the landscape will inspire and enhance your creative journey. From photography’s earliest origins and albumen prints to dry plate negatives, advanced cyanotypes, and photo-based collage, you’ll gain hands-on experience with techniques that have shaped the history of photography. With four weeks of personalized 1:1 mentoring woven throughout, you’ll receive tailored feedback to elevate your work and refine your craft. View the included workshops and don’t miss this chance to deepen your photographic practice with like-minded peers while surrounded by the natural beauty of Maine this summer.
If you are considering our 4-year degree alternative—the 30-week Professional Certificate in Photography—this intensive mirrors the Historic Processes track of the on-campus certificate.
Historic Photographic Processes Intensive with Brenton Hamilton Workshops
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Week 1: Photography's Origins: Early Processes and Techniques
Step into photography's origins with Brenton Hamilton. Working with silver, salt, and sunlight to recreate pioneering 1840s processes and discover their contemporary potential.
Week 2: The Albumen Process
Step back into the 19th century and explore one of the most beautiful and historically significant photographic printing processes: the albumen print. In this hands-on workshop, students will learn to create their own photographs using the same technique that defined the golden age of early photography.
Week 3: First Mentored Week
This week focuses on 1:1 mentoring, allowing you to refine your work and receive personalized guidance from Brenton. You'll have dedicated time to discuss your progress, refine your techniques, and explore any challenges you're facing.
Week 4: Dry Plate Negatives and Collodion Chloride Prints
Immerse yourself in the process of creating glass plate negatives and stunning Collodion Chloride Prints. Brenton will guide you through this historic process, helping you capture the unique beauty of 19th-century photographic techniques.
Week 5: Second Mentored Week
This week focuses on 1:1 mentoring, allowing you to refine your work and receive personalized guidance from Brenton. You'll have dedicated time to discuss your progress, refine your techniques, and explore any challenges you're facing.
Week 6: The Advanced Cyanotype
The journey continues with the advanced cyanotype process, where you'll delve into complex techniques for producing beautifully detailed blueprints. This workshop will help you refine your skills and create breathtaking works of art through the cyanotype process.
Week 7: Third Mentored Week
In Week 7, you’ll continue with 1:1 mentoring, focusing on your ongoing projects and deepening your understanding of the processes explored during the first four weeks. Brenton will provide tailored feedback and support to elevate your work further.
Week 8: Historic Process Mentoring
Spend a week of intensive study in your choice of historic processes with one on one mentoring from a master of historic and alternative processes. This week will help you integrate everything you've learned, allowing you to produce polished pieces that showcase your mastery of historic photographic techniques.
Week 9: Where Images Meet: The Photo-Based Collage
Join collagist Brenton Hamilton for a dynamic, hands-on week of collage-making that integrates multiple forms of visuals with personal expression. In this welcoming and exploratory workshop, you’ll discover new ways to create photo-based collages using a wide range of media and materials.
Week 10: Fourth Mentored Week
The final mentoring session brings it all together. You'll meet 1:1 with Brenton to refine your current projects and discuss how to carry these techniques forward into your future work.
Instructor: Brenton Hamilton
Brenton Hamilton, MFA, is an artist, educator, and historian of photographic processes whose practice spans more than three decades. Working with historic photographic techniques—including gum bichromate, platinum, embellished cyanotype, and wet-plate collodion on black glass—Hamilton creates distinctive, often surrealist images that transform historical processes into vehicles for personal narrative and imaginative inquiry. His work is particularly recognized for its richly embellished cyanotypes, in which symbolic imagery and recurring narrative obsessions converge.
Hamilton’s work has been exhibited at more than 200 venues, including over twenty solo exhibitions, and is held in public collections including the Farnsworth Art Museum, the Portland Museum of Art, the University of New England, the Lamar Dodd Art Center, and the Colby College Museum of Art. In 2017, the University of Maine Museum of Art presented a mid-career retrospective of his work. Schilt Publishing, Amsterdam, published A Blue Idyll, a retrospective monograph spanning twenty-five years of his practice, featuring an essay by critic Lyle Rexer.
An educator and lecturer deeply engaged with photography’s historical and contemporary trajectories, Hamilton has been affiliated with Maine Media Workshops since 1992 and has lectured on photography at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. His teaching, research, and writing address the evolution of photographic image-making, from nineteenth-century processes to contemporary digital technologies and artificial intelligence.
In August 2026, Hamilton was named the inaugural Fox Talbot Fellow at Maine Media College. His fellowship focuses on historic process research, publishing, and public outreach, extending his longstanding commitment to the study and practice of photography’s historical processes and the state of the medium.
