Photography Workshop with Jim Herrington

Venice, Italy

May 27 & 28 full weekend. 

9:00 to 13:00

Lunch

14:30 to 18:30

Jim Herrington's portraits of musicians and celebrities including The Rolling Stones, Dolly Parton, Morgan Freeman, Tom Petty, Joe Strummer, Cormac McCarthy and Willie Nelson have appeared on the pages of Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone and The New York Times as well as on scores of album covers for decades.

The Climbers, his two-decade, round-the-world portrait project documenting early-to-mid 20th century mountain climbing legends was published as a book which received both the Grand Prize and the Mountaineering History awards at the 2017 Banff Film & Book Festival. The project has had a subsequent years-long book tour with numerous exhibitions across Europe, North America and Asia.

This two-day portraiture workshop will emphasize an approach that relies on "found" natural light and minimal gear. Herrington will demonstrate how he travels the world with a very small kit, often working in less-than-ideal locations and situations. Herrington believes less in overpowering the scenario with soft boxes and excess gear and more in having a sensitivity to one's surroundings, developing a "visual vocabulary" and finding creative, often simple solutions to taking good photographs.

Here is a chance to learn firsthand how Herrington shot the photographs for his award-winning book The Climbers as well as the celebrity and musician portraits he has taken over a decades-long career. Relying as much on philosophy as technique, Herrington's class is suitable for photographers of all skill levels and will emphasize that what you have in your brain is more important than what you have in your camera bag.

This two-day master class will include discussions, slide shows and lab work, followed by a lunch break; afternoons will be spent taking photos in the stunning Venice locations (including travel by boat to one of the nearby islands) applying what we've learned. Students should bring their own camera (digital or analog). 

Selected photos from the workshop will be exhibited during the ONA Festival 2023 in September.