Kia ora tatou:

There have been a number of developments and announcements I would like to share with you.

Site upgrades

James, my web genuis, has made some modifications to this website. The wedding and portrait pages have now been incorporated into a single category, called People. He is an incredibly talented designer, and the framework he has used to build this site is quite remarkable, giving me huge control over the content and layout of the site. If you are looking for a good designer at an unbelievably reasonable price, I recommend him highly.

At the foot of each page on this site is a small logo. Click on that to make contact.

This is to make way for the fact that we have given workshops their own front-line status. Attached to this is a signup page, where you can fill in your details and submit them electronically. You can now access them from the main title bar. In the coming weeks, as I tie down further dates, we will post these up. In planning at the moment are 2 workshops on workflow and digital photography, to be held in the North Island in late August. Apologies to those of you who keep emailing me asking when they will be. I am tied up every weekend, from now until the middle of June, with workshops at the University of Canterbury and teaching.

Workshops

The promised Wedderburn workshops are now online. You can read about them on the workshops page, and download a pdf with detailed information. Please get back to us if you would like to take part. With luck, will will have a white Maniototo week. For those of you who have never been there, it is a quite extraordinary landscape, with huge potential for making magnificent photographs. To give you some idea of the programme:

Each day will consist of a lecture and / or technical workshop, including how to realise your vision, how to take an image from previsualisation to completion. Fieldtrips will be an integral part of the programme, along with evaluation of work shot the day before. Since the workshop is about developing a personal photographic direction, at some time during the week there will be a one-to-one mentoring session for each participant, to discuss work and personal aspirations. Discussion and peer evaluation will form an important part of the workshop.

Online learning

A number of people have approached me, asking if I offered online courses. It really began a few months ago, when I was asked if I would mentor a photographer living in the North Island. After thinking about it for some time, I realised that the answer was to build an online programme,which would allow students to work at their own pace and in their own time. Some of you will know that, in my former life, I worked for the Ministry of Education as a curriculum developer, and spent 6 months in the private sector, building an online course in digital media (my son, Alex, is doing it this year at his high school). I also worked as a researcher for a UK e-Learning research organisation, so I am looking forward to the challenge of building a programme that focuses on Creativity and Mastery.

Broadly speaking, the programme will be a kind of virtual photographic art school. Each of the students will have his/her own virtual studio, accessible by him/her and me. There will be a common room where students can interact, a resource area and a foyer/gallery visible to the public. The first year willl look at creativity and the major photographic genres ( eg, landscape, portraiture, still life). The 2nd year will continue the genres, but students ( who need to have completed year one) will choose one of the modules and carry out a major thesis on it. There will be only 12 students in each year.

I am really excited about this project. Kind of Back to the Future for me. If you have any thoughts/suggestions, please feel free to comment.

James and I registered the domain names yesterday, so it is underway. Look for www.creative-i-online.com in the near future.

Future Exhibitions

Work is underway towards an exhibition in Auckland later this year, and some initial talk towards a show in London in the near future.

ka kite ano

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 29th, 2007 at 2:05 pm and is filed under Shout out. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.