Master Natural Light workshop for Portrait and Fashion Photographers

A good portrait does not limit reality to its visible and material aspects, but on the contrary, it gives predominant significance to the invisible, to the sacred. Seán Jackson

Join us for a one day immersive workshop that engages and develops the artistic, practical and philosophical elements of your photographic practice. Discover what is possible with your camera in relation to light, direction, composing portraits and stand out fashion portraits. This workshop aims to teach the student an embodied understanding of how to create a meeting point of these elements – direction, lighting and philosophical view of the subject – to invite a resonant portrait to emerge.

This workshop suits a more open minded photographer who is looking to develop their own way of capturing what they feel into a portrait. It is not dependent on technical knowledge although a basic fluency with SLR photography does help.

In the first part of the morning, we will be reading portrait and fashion photographs to discuss what we are seeing and develop a way of communicating around imagery together. This opens up new ways of seeing, showing us what we are often taking for granted, assuming or overlooking which is extremely valuable for creating our own work.

This will be followed by an outdoor lighting and direction workshop for portraiture, under the sky, working with reflectors and scrims. You will learn how to work with the sun, clouds and experiment with the different opportunities under the same light conditions.

In the afternoon, we will move into the daylight studio where we will work two professional models, exploring the different ways of working with the natural light in the space. Each participant will get one to one mentoring to help fine tune their direction style and light awareness and will create a strong image or series of images for their portfolio.

What will I learn?

• Experience how to connect with your model or sitter in ease and awareness.

• Learn how to direct under different light sources.

• Get a feel for studio lights.

• Discover how to work with the sun and sky from different perspectives to create effects and moods.

• Get a feel for reflectors, scrims and blocks.

• Consolidate understanding of shutter speed, aperture and ISO in relation to varied lighting.

Students should already have some practical experience of using a manual DSLR. If you need advice please email or phone darragh@photomuseumireland.ie 01-6714654

Photographer’s Approach:

To work with colours, one must first work with the light ‘Edvard Munch’.

There is no fixed, ultimate truth that can be brought to light and kept there forever. No two moments are exactly the same. Even two portraits taken on the same camera, of the same person, by the same photographer, milliseconds apart are slightly different and can never be repeated as the same. The truth of one moment is slightly different to the truth of the next. These slight differences can not be described because our spoken language is neither advanced enough nor finely tuned enough to do so.

Truth can only be witnessed and felt through our own awareness as a felt connection, not a mental comprehension. Even in the simplest of portrait scenes, we’ve got countless elements of visible and hidden life. The surface elements of light, face, expression, colours, tones, body, fabrics, clothing shapes, textures, visible space to the hidden elements of light source, emotion, connection, reason, air, body language, temperature, to name a few – all alive and changing form, subtly, moment to moment.

So what happens when the photographer directs their subject from an honest space of not knowing or pretending to possess a truth? An evolving space of sensing and intuition, jumping between following and leading, patiently coaxing a moment to emerge, where all of the life forces in the space breathe together for a millisecond and the picture reveals itself.

Sean Jackson 2023

Course Cancellation & Rescheduling Policy