Capturing the Invisible Spirit with Infrared
with Elizabeth Opalenik
© Elizabeth Opalenik
In this workshop we will explore ways to photographically convey inner feelings that are poetic and capture the essence of our subjects. On Friday evening we will start by looking at students’ portfolios and utilize that information to help each participant develop, in a hands-on shooting session, their own style. With digital infrared on Saturday, we shall explore its unique qualities in the landscape and around the Venice Beach environment of people. We’ll return at the end of the day to critique what we have learned and apply it the next morning with another shoot involving models. With fabric, props, styling, and lighting we will create sensual images, while exploring digital infrared images for their ethereal mood and lovely skin quality. In doing so we shall discover ways to create intimate, honest portraits that cross between fine art and commercial. We’ll view that work on Sunday afternoon. Elizabeth will also share original work in film and digital infrared, while discussing print presentation and how to organize a portfolio for exhibition or commercial purposes.
Suitable for photographers wishing to explore different avenues for artistic expression, this workshop promises to introduce new and exciting ways of producing images which challenge our way of perceiving the world, pushing the creative envelope.
Elizabeth Opalenik (www.opalenik.com) is a photographic artist who believes that all good photographs are self-portraits that lie somewhere between imagination and dreams. From her earliest days doing advertising and editorial assignments, she has been hired for the sense of poetic grace and movement she brings to her images using mordançage, infrared and handpainting. A sought after educator and lecturer, she privately conducts photography workshops internationally and in partnership with the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops, the Maine Photographic Workshops, the British Guild of Portrait Photographers, National Geographic Expeditions, The Recontre d’Arles, and others. Her work has been featured and published in such magazines as Zoom, Camera Arts, Photo District News, Collectors Photography and Progresso Fotografico. Elizabeth’s work is exhibited, collected and published internationally. She is on the advisory board for Freestyle Photographic Supplies and recently published her first monograph, Poetic Grace: Elizabeth Opalenik Photographs 1979-2007.
Dates/Times: January 11-13, 2008; Friday evening — 7-9 pm; Saturday & Sunday — 10 am-6 pm
WORKSHOP FEE: $525 + $100 model and equipment fee
CLASS LOCATION: Venice Beach
ENROLLMENT LIMIT: 15 students
