The best workshop ever!

It’s been a little over a week since I got back from my workshop in Santa Fe.  I always come home from the workshops with a sense of…well it’s hard to put into words, but it’s always good, and inspiring, and awesome, and refreshing.  This year was no different.  In fact, this year was the best!  I’m dying to tell you all about it because I’m still oozing with the good feelings from the class.

The Santa Fe workshops offer a variety of classes, from landscape, to portraiture, to fine art, to photoshop.  They’re all great workshops, in part because they’re in Santa Fe and everywhere you turn there’s a great image waiting to be captured, but mostly because they bring the best photographers in the industry to teach the classes.  I was drawn to Jeff Lipsky’s class because of his work, it’s beautiful, natural, and can mostly be summed up as sunshine. 🙂  Yet, not quite rainbows.  Check it out here.  Jeff Lipsky

Jeff believes in keeping it simple, he loves beautiful window light,  he doesn’t use a tripod so he can easily change it up, and he is easily inspired.  I loved watching him work.

I really connected with his style and it was much needed confirmation, but my favorite part of the workshop was hearing the stories.  Stories of hard shoots, stories of awesome shoots, and stories of failures that still haunt him.  He was real and humble and easy to relate to.

Below are a few of the images I captured while practicing his techniques.  All natural light.  🙂

Meet Jeff.  He was a cowboy the day we went to the old western town.  An LA cowboy anyway.

If you’re a photographer, at any level, I would encourage you to save your pennies for a Santa Fe workshop.  You’ll learn a ton from your instructor, but maybe even more from the people in the class.  There were 14 in our class and we all loved each other.  I made friends I’ll keep forever.  It was the best group ever!  I mean just look how cool we are.  🙂