13 Jan 2016

6 Things I Love About Teaching Photography In Italy

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Siena - Workshop Student Photograph
Siena – Workshop Student Photograph

I Love Photography – It’s a medium of stunning beauty, tremendous power, subtle nuance and fascinating history.

I Love Italy – It’s a country of inviting people, grand vistas, intimate towns and rich culture.

I Love Teaching –  It’s a process of sharing, listening, guiding, critiquing and moving students forward.

I’ve been a photographer since 1978, a teacher of photography since 1984 and an Italian traveler since 1989. From the first time I photographed in Italy in 1989, the photo teacher in me wanted to share that experience with students. In 2009, I started bringing small groups to a country that I love where we could work together in the medium that I love.

Before that first Italian Photography Workshop took place, I was anxious – would my dream of sharing my multiple passions become reality? I quickly learned that it would and that this experience of taking photographers with me to Italy to learn and grow was even more rewarding than I had thought it would be.

Here are 6 things that I love about teaching photography in Italy:

Community Is Key

Keeping my groups to just 7 students means that everyone gets to know each other well, which means sharing vision, insights, tips and more comes easily. That sense of community is built equally well in the field as we photograph together or over a glass of wine. This environment is a fertile ground for restoring creativity and creating a new foundation for our creative lives.

Immersion Creates Intensity

Because we jump into photography and Italy with both feet, we really get to immerse ourselves in them. A camera is in hand – or nearby – every waking moment and, because we base all of the workshops in towns and cities, Italian culture is literally at our doorstep. That immersion creates an intensity of experience that is rare – we Live Photography while we are Living in Italy.

Slow is Good

The pace of Italian life tends to be slow – or at least slower than what most of the rest of the world puts themselves through every day. Slowing down means that we get to see more. Many travelers try to do so much in each day that they don’t get a sense of where they are or what it really feels like. The itineraries that I set for the workshops leaves time for wandering, contemplating, exploring and thinking about what our photographs mean and how they communicate that meaning. Slowing down is one of the keys to making great photographs.

Photography & Food Bring People Together

Photographing with other photographers can be a very rewarding experience. Not only do other photographers completely understand that you may need an extra few minutes to find the essence of a particular subject but they might also help you see something that you hadn’t seen before. Similarly, because we share great meals at excellent restaurants, we get to learn about each other as photographers and individuals.

The Classroom is Everywhere

Though I have taught photography for a long time, most of my experiences were in a classroom with desks and chairs. In Italy, my classroom is everywhere – in a hill town, in a vineyard, at breakfast or anywhere we happen to be. With workshop students, I get to have the experience of making photographs, looking at those photographs – either on the camera or on a computer screen – and then making more photographs- ones that are informed by the experience of looking, critiquing and guiding.

Storytelling Creates Focus

By getting students to think about story when they make their photographs, and using a variety of instructional strategies to get them there, the photographs they make are better, clearer and more personal statements than if they just shoot whatever they see. Together, we use our cameras to create stories that have a beginning, a middle and an end – and that makes all the difference in the quality of images that students make.

I hope you’ll join one of my workshops me and share these passions with me. A few spaces remain for my June, 2016 Italy workshops and registration is closing soon; click below for more information:

Questions or more information? Call Jeff at 630.202.3635 or email jeff@jeffcurto.com

9 Jan 2016

Your Italy, Your Photographs, Your Story

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Photograph by Workshop Student Alisdair
Photograph by Workshop Student Alisdair

“What’s your story? It’s all in the telling. Stories are compasses and architecture; we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of a world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice. To love someone is to put yourself in their place, we say, which is to put yourself in their story, or figure out how to tell yourself their story.

Which means that a place is a story, and stories are geography, and empathy is first of all an act of imagination, a storyteller’s art, and then a way of traveling from here to there.” – Rebecca Solnit

When I read the quote above by the writer Rebecca Solnit, I immediately thought about a primary goal I have for my Italy Photography Workshop students:

Story

Many people go to Italy and many of them make photographs of what they see there. My workshops take students to the next level, teaching them how to be storytellers with photographs. So, rather than returning with a random set of images, my students create a set of images that tell a story – their story – about what they see, feel and respond to, creating a personal response for their time in Italy. My goal for my students is to push them to go beyond picturesque, postcard images and help them tell their own stories about these amazing Italian places.

A few spaces remain for my June, 2016 Italy workshops and registration is closing soon; click below for more information:

Questions or more information? Call Jeff at 630.202.3635 or email jeff@jeffcurto.com

 

15 Dec 2015

Tuscany Photography Workshop – In Search of the Personal: Photographing Southern Tuscany

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How do photographers develop a personal style? When – and how – can you as a photographer begin to establish a direction in your work? Perhaps most importantly, what makes a photograph become a “personal” statement? Through lots of image making, a blend of formal and field instruction and plenty of time for discussion and critique, we will work to uncover themes and lines of vision that may not have been previously evident to you.

And we’ll do those things in Tuscany!

There are few places on earth like Tuscany. Its landscape is the landscape painted by the great artists of the Renaissance. Its architecture is known for its sense of proportion, beauty and attention to minute detail. Tuscan people are distinctive, friendly and resilient. Its light is soft, enveloping and revealing. This experience will allow you to experience Tuscany’s remarkable culture, people, landscape and hill towns and work toward a personal photographic response to the Tuscan sense of place. I will push you to go beyond the picturesque and help you discover your own response to the texture, rhythm and spirit of Tuscany.

We will divide our photographic time between rural and urban locations and everything in between. Participants will meet up in Rome where our driver will pick us up and take us to our base for the week, our modern, air-conditoned hotel in the picture-perfect hill town of Pienza, making day trips to nearby Montepulciano, Montalcino, Siena and more. There will be big towns that hustle and bustle and villages so small that fewer than two dozen people reside there and time has stood still.

We’ll photograph churches set in remote landscapes and cathedrals perched on the highest point of hilltop towns. Twisting roads lined with cypress, endless fields dotted with the colors of wildflowers and gems of architecture will spread out before our cameras. You will meet – and photograph – Tuscan artisans who make wine, cheese and olive oil and learn about Tuscan art, culture and history. Some mornings, we’ll be up early to catch morning light; some evenings, dinner will wait while we catch the last rays of the sun. Our driver will get us to the right places at the right time for the right light.

Just one spot remains in this small, 7-person workshop.

In Search of the Personal: Photographing Southern Tuscany – June 11 to June 18, 2016
Land Cost: $4695

Click Here To Reserve Your Spot Now!

Questions? send Jeff an email or give a call at 630.202.3635

Pienza, Tuscany - Photograph by Workshopper Lewis Dunn
Pienza, Tuscany – Photograph by Workshopper Lewis Dunn
Pienza Portrait – Photograph by Andreas Overland
Spring Grapevine, Tuscany - Photograph by Jeff Curto
Spring Grapevine, Tuscany – Photograph by Jeff Curto
9 Dec 2015

Italy Photo Workshop – June 2016 – Your Story of Rome

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June 6 to June 11, 2016

Reserve Your Spot

Questions? send Jeff an email or give a call at 630.202.3635

Rome is a city with a story, or rather with millennia of stories, and through photography, we will concentrate on learning to tell a story of Rome  – your story of Rome – with images.

I’ve visited Rome more than 30 times over the last 20 years and have intimate knowledge of what I consider one of the greatest cities in the world. From the grand fountains, the Baroque churches and the busy markets, to the quiet neighborhoods, and the beautiful Roman people… I can help you see and photograph a side to Rome that most tourists don’t get to see.

Our goal will be to figure out how to make our own images and how to take those images and create a story that gives us our own sense of what it is that Rome means to each of us.

In the field, we’ll spend time trying to find unique ways of seeing iconic sights as well as finding subject matter that is well off the beaten track. Back at the hotel, we will edit your take, working on shot selection, sequence and series to help you tell your own story of Rome. Before we depart the eternal city, you will have produced a group of your own images designed to tell a story that is yours and yours alone; your response to one of the greatest cities in the world.

We’ll be based in the Centro Storico, the historical center.  Our accommodations are ideally located near the Pantheon, the Piazza Navona and the newly-reopened Trevi Fountain; it’s a “walk to” location for so many sites (including Giolitti, one of Rome’s premier gelaterie) you’ll want to photograph.  The hotel also has a great rooftop terrace where we can relax in the evening and take our breakfast in the morning.

We will spend one day in Classical Rome, with a guided tour of the streets of the ancient fora where the Caesars walked. Another day will be spent in the seldom-visited neighborhood of Trastevere (“across the Tiber”) and on our way will visit the Campo di Fiore, home of the daily flower and vegetable market, passing by what is thought to be Rome’s best bakery. Our other days will be split between destinations in “our” neighborhood of the Centro Storico and off-the-beaten-track destinations like the neighborhood of Testaccio, with its amazing protestant cemetery and the Pyramid of Cestius.

I have limited this experience to a maximum of 7 photographers in order to ensure the best level of personal instructional attention.

Your Story of Rome – June 6 to June 11, 2016
Land Cost: $4595

Reserve Your Spot

Questions? send Jeff an email or give a call at 630.202.3635

Piazza della Rotunda, Rome
Piazza della Rotunda, Rome
Roma – Photo by Kathryn Caruthers, Workshop Participant 2010

Rome_0603-244 copy

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