Products You've Viewed
We’ll keep track of the products you view here.
Articles You've Viewed
We'll track the last 7 articles you've viewed so you can quickly return to them.

See It Now

© Eddie Soloway Loading...

© Eddie Soloway

D300, AF-S DX Zoom-NIKKOR 17-55mm f/2.8G IF-ED, 1/125 second, f/7.1, ISO 800, Aperture priority, Center-weighted metering

Download now Read More

It's not that Eddie Soloway doesn't teach the techniques of imaging—he does, but he believes those techniques are secondary to a photographer's vision.

Eddie is an experienced instructor as well as a skilled photographer. In his 16th year of teaching at the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops, his signature course is titled A Natural Eye, and his new workshop is called Eyes Wide Open—and with those titles, you can tell right away that Eddie's efforts are concentrated on a goal at once simple and complex: seeing.

"The week-long Natural Eye workshop at Santa Fe is about two things," Eddie says. "One is to help people see the natural world with fresh eyes; the second is to then bring the skills of photography up to those eyes."

He begins his instruction by talking about the magic that for over 150 years had enabled people to capture the joys and sorrows of the human condition and the beauty of the natural world. The magic is, of course, photography, and what makes images magical is the eye of the photographer. To reinforce that point, the workshop's first day activities do not include cameras. "We leave the cameras in the classroom," Eddie says, "and we head out on a series of sensory activities." These activities, it turns out, feature remarkably child-like exercises. "I'll say, 'Wouldn't it be fun if we could see out of the top of our heads and into the clouds?' and I'll pull out a mirror, which I call a sky eye, and then we walk around in the forest with these mirrors, looking at things as if we had eyes on the top of our heads, and that leads to all kinds of activities in seeing."

There's more: "If it's a bright sunny day, we look for shadows with what I call shadow catchers, which are index cards glued to Popsicle sticks. Every branch, every petal, every thing casts a shadow on a sunny day, and we're catching those shadows, bending them, turning them, bringing them in and out of focus."

The participants do six activities in an hour-long walk, all aimed at sensitizing them to opportunities for photographs, all encouraging them to see as kids again, kids who are making discoveries and having a good time. The process is also designed to pull the participants out of their routines of seeing and get them to abandon their preconceptions about subjects and techniques. "The thing about a workshop," Eddie says, "is that you're trying to lead them somewhere else."

Eddie is not a "12 tripods lined up and cameras aimed at the same thing" kind of instructor. He doesn't stand next to the students and tell them what to shoot. "That's more photo tour," he says, "where you go to see the Sandhill Cranes and everyone lines up and photographs them. I don't do that. If I surround people with fun ideas and show them examples, photographically, and let them loose and encourage them, they're amazed when they come back from a day when everyone was in the same location and discover what 16 sets of eyes can see." 

 

Nikon USA
©2010 Nikon Inc.