Throughout the history of photography documentary storytelling has been a mainstay and, with the rise of the Internet and digital media, today there are even more opportunities for documentary work to be seen. There’s a wide, fast-growing audience, and it’s an audience craving emotionally rich and intellectually stimulating content.

In this four-day workshop, Deanne helps you venture into the Santa Fe community to create a photo essay or photo story of your own. Our goal is to document a cultural or human-interest story, one that is engaging, provocative, and told from our unique point of view. There are endless possibilities to choose from: Hispanic artisans, tattoo parlors, life at a fire station, authentic Santa Fe, or Santa Fe the “tourist town.”

With limitless subjects and story lines, and endless ways to cover them, we dive into another goal of this workshop: learning how to photograph a subject. To that end, we discuss how to connect with people, to put them at ease and gain the trust necessary to capture real and authentic moments.

Deanne reviews the importance of concepting and researching our stories. We discuss in-depth the “how” of telling a story, which can ultimately be more important than the subject. In group and individual critiques, we review our progress and keep an eye on our ultimate goal: creating honest and visually compelling images that convey the story in the most effective way possible.