Photo art experiences
A few times a year Martin and Samantha Lee Osner take a very small group somewhere beautiful and work alongside them. Camera in the morning, brush and ink in the afternoon, and something finished by the end of it.
Around ten people at a time. Dates, prices and booking live on artphoto.academy.
Why the numbers are kept so small
Almost every workshop you will find is built around filling a room. These are built around the opposite. The group is small because a small group is the only way this particular kind of teaching works at all.
One
Not from the front of a room. Martin stands behind you while you are actually working, watches what your hands are doing, and says the one thing that changes the picture. You cannot do that with thirty people and a projector.
Two
Nobody is handed a recipe and left to copy it. The work you make is yours, and the guidance bends around what you are trying to say rather than around a syllabus.
Three
Every one of these ends with finished pieces in your hands. Photographed, worked by hand, and made in the place you were standing in.
Where they are held
Each one is run by Martin, and two of them alongside Samantha Lee Osner. Full details, dates and booking sit on artphoto.academy, so what follows is the character of each rather than the paperwork.
Loire Valley, France
Six days based in a chateau, photographing medieval villages, river valleys and stonework that has been standing for eight hundred years, then turning those photographs into finished artwork with pigment ink, chromatic washes and transfers onto fibre. Taught by Martin and Samantha together. There is no fixed timetable, the day follows the light.
See dates and book
Swellendam, Overberg, South Africa
Five days in a valley surrounded by mountains and the beauty of nature, a three and a half hour drive from Cape Town. Mornings on location, afternoons at the table with paint, watercolour and texture, and evenings looking honestly at what everybody made. Martin and Samantha both teach it.
See dates and book
Marloth Park, on the edge of the Kruger
Wildlife photography taken somewhere it very rarely goes. The animals are the beginning rather than the end, and the work that comes out of it looks far more like painting than like a safari album. For photographers who have taken the sharp, correct animal picture many times over and want something else from it.
See dates and book
Western and Northern Cape, South Africa
The one where the camera takes a step back. Your own photographs become the starting point and the rest of it is paint, and you go home with work you made with your hands. No painting experience is expected or wanted, which is rather the point of it.
See dates and bookWhat actually happens
These are not holidays with a camera, and they are not workshops where you sit and watch somebody else work. They are creative working days, and attendees tend to be quite surprised at how tired they are by the evening, because of the creative energy spent.
Normally out on location long before daybreak, while the light is still worth having. Martin works alongside you rather than in front of you, and the talking is quiet and one to one.
Back for a quick breakfast, then into the studio or around the table to look at what was photographed. You get honest feedback, not only from Martin and Sam but from everybody, which is uncomfortable for about ten minutes and then becomes the best part of the week.
Hands in the materials. Ink, pigment, wash, transfer, paint. This is where a photograph stops being a photograph, and it is messy, which everybody enjoys more than they expect to.
Back out shooting with the last light of the day, before getting together for a communal supper. The time is spent talking about what worked and what did not. A small group means it is a conversation rather than an audience, and a good deal gets learned around the table, while making friends you keep.
Who these are for
And who they are not
Dates, prices, what is included, where you stay and how to hold a place. All of it sits on Martin's own site, which is where these are run from.
See all experiencesOpens in a new tab. Nothing is booked here.
