The line-up for 2012 workshops is done, and it’s going to be a fun year.

Here’s what’s on tap:

Joshua Tree, California April 24th-28th
Reykjavik Iceland July 1st-7th
Asheville, North Carolina July 25th-29th
Santa Fe, New Mexico August 6th-11th
Park City, Utah August 21st-25th

To register for any of the courses, go to the NudePhotoWorkshops contact page.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be announcing the full 2012 workshop calendar. The first is a repeat of our highly successful Iceland Nude Photo Workshop.

Here’s just one comment from this year’s course:

“Allen is a most gifted teacher, and for anyone considering a unique opportunity to visit a beautiful country and learn a form of photography under a true artist, this is it. I have great memories of the workshop and cherish what I learned and the beautiful images I was able to capture.”-Marc Safran

For information, go to the page for theIceland Nude Photo Workshop July 1-7, 2012.

Over the last three days, I’ve been in Park City, Utah teaching a private mentorship with a photographer from Draper, Utah. Starting with a portfolio review and equipment assessment on Friday evening, we moved into shooting yesterday. Our model was a wonderfully talented dancer, who brought great energy and spirit to the day.

As with the nude photography workshops, the focus of the time together is on the student. After doing a demonstration, the rest of my day is spent supporting the photographer in both the aesthetic and technical arenas. The only time I will raise a camera is to show another angle the photographer might want to consider.

Last night, we did a critique of the work produced so that the photographer could build on what she learned when we went back out to shoot today. Working with a different model created the opportunity to forge a new collaborative relationship, and make images based on her unique strengths.

Tomorrow, we will do a final critique and review any lingering questions about technique, post-processing and finding talent to continue creating new images. It’s exhilarating to see the growth in someone’s artistic vision and technical abilities in such a short amount of time.

Yesterday the Nude Photo Workshop in Santa Fe, New Mexico ended. Several of the participants commented on how fast the week seemed to go by. It certainly felt that way to me. By the end, we had all become a big family, sharing our creative process, insights and humor through the long days of shooting and editing. All the participants showed an impressive bump in the sophistication of their images, and the closing dinner and slide show at The Eldorado Hotel was a wonderful celebration of their growth. Everyone seemed enthusiastic to continue shooting fine art nude photography when they got home.

Hats off to Reid Callanan and everyone at The Santa Fe Workshops who made this an inspiring, fun-filled week. Their love of the medium and support for each class is remarkable.

With this course, five solid weeks of travel for workshops ends. It’s been an amazing, and invigorating time, filled with lots of wonderful memories. I feel fortunate indeed to make friends with so many people who have a passion for life in general and photography in the particular. It’s a great ride. Heartfelt thanks to everyone!

Most people think the best light is at sunrise and sunset, and shooting mid day is to be avoided. So today’s demonstration was about how to shoot in mid day and come away with strong images.

The reality is that you just have to figure out how to use the light that is available to you to it’s best advantage. You may not want to shoot someone standing looking straight forward because you will get dark eye sockets. But what if you lay the person down? High top back light is a tried and true approach to still life in the studio, so why not apply it to the figure in the landscape?

Today, along with two talented females, we also had a wonderful male dancer and aerialist for our workshop. The participants thoroughly enjoyed the physicality Apollo brought to the shoot.

Yesterday we created photographs in rugged terrain south of Santa Fe on a beautiful 13,000 acre property. There were arroyos, dried river beds and areas charred by past fires.

Each day before the participants start shooting, I’ll do a demonstration and yesterday I focused on creating emotional content in an image. By placing the model in a barren, foreboding environment, and then talking through potential scenarios, we were able to create an image with a sense of story and meaning.

It’s been a very busy five weeks. The first three weeks of July were in Iceland, first with a workshop in collaboration with Focus on Nature, then a week to shoot for myself, then a private mentorship for five days with two individual photographers. From Iceland it was on to Aspen, Colorado for a lighting workshop, and now in Santa Fe, New Mexico for a six day “Figure in the Western Landscape” through The Santa Fe Workshops.

We’ve got some wonderful models, a great crew and talented participants. We’re already feeling like one big family, and lots of great images are being made.

It’s a privilege to work with talented models and passionate participants. The second image was from a demonstration I did about scale relationship when placing a figure into the landscape.