Land as Collaborator: Remixing Digital Prints in the Landscape

with Anna Rotty

April 28 – May 2, 2025

Monday – Friday

Package Price $1395.00

Standard Deposit $400.00

Course Description

How might we think of landscape imagery as active rather than reiterating a passive gaze? With the long history of artists documenting the natural Southwestern landscape as observers, photographers sometimes forget that we too are part of the environments we inhabit.

Artist and educator Anna Rotty seeks to remind participants of the interconnection between the landscape, humanity, and our creative process. Join Anna for this week-long workshop in Santa Fe as she guides participants through iterative processes in photography and digital printmaking that push both mediums to new creative heights. We learn to view the natural world as our collaborator as we move back and forth from the land to the studio, remixing digital images and prints with found natural elements.

We open this workshop by photographing a beautiful landscape location near Santa Fe, where Anna guides students in slow-looking exercises, sketching with the camera as we familiarize ourselves with a new environment. We then take our images back to the Digital Lab to bring our work to life as physical prints. Working iteratively, participants learn the technical skills of digital fine-art printmaking through Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop.

After experimenting with a variety of digital papers, we bring our photographic prints back into the environment to become part of a layered representation of landscape. Practicing thoughtful framing and viewfinder techniques, we collapse multiple moments in time by bringing physical prints back into the world to be re-photographed. Participants are encouraged to incorporate natural elements into their compositions and explore what is possible when we allow land, water, sunlight, and shadow to factor into our representations of place.

This workshop consists of field trips photographing in nature, printing demonstrations and exercises, a series of experimental techniques, and lectures and discussions geared to expand our practices and engage the landscape as a collaborator. On the final day, we share and reflect on how layering, print manipulation, and abstraction can expand the ways in which we see and understand the land. Participants leave with 10 exhibition-quality prints, a technical foundation in digital printmaking, and an expanded creative framework for photographing and engaging in relationships with the natural world.

This workshop is designed for photographers seeking to expand their creative practice and broaden their definition of the printed image. We explore how physical prints generate experimentation and play, allowing us to access a more complete and emotional sense of space, place, and memory. Join us for a week in Santa Fe to expand your technical skill set and work in collaboration with the land to explore new definitions of place and relationship.

Additional Information

WHO SHOULD ATTEND:

All are welcome. One space in this workshop is reserved at a discounted price of $697.50 (plus tax) for an emerging artist. If you are a photographer or artist between the ages of 18-35 interested in participating in this class, please submit your information at the following link for consideration: bit.ly/SFWApplicant

What You Should Know:

Participants must be able to download and select images using image editing software for class sessions. Working knowledge of Adobe Lightroom and/or Photoshop is required for this workshop. No prior printmaking experience is required.

Activity Level:

To get the most from your workshop experience, participants should be in good physical (mobility, stamina) and mental health. Come prepared for the high elevation of Santa Fe, long days, and seasonal weather. You must be able to carry your own photographic and personal gear at all times, both on campus and on location. You are responsible for being open and honest about your physical fitness, and we reserve the right to remove you from the workshop if we find your fitness to be less than that which you have described.

Participants should be able to engage in moderate outdoor exercise for up to an hour or more at a time including off-trail walking on uneven terrain including sand, dirt, and loose rock. Location work is likely to include early morning and/or late evening shoots.

Policies:

View Payment, Refund, Withdrawal, and Transfer Policies for domestic workshops.

Accommodations:

Participants are responsible for making their own housing arrangements in Santa Fe. On-campus accommodations are not currently available.

Package Price INFO:

$1,395 includes instruction, ink/printing costs, materials, location fees, daily beverage service, and one group dinner. Travel, accommodations, and all other meals are the responsibility of the participant.

about

Anna Rotty

Anna Rotty is an artist and educator based in Albuquerque, NM, where she teaches photography at the University of New Mexico. Interested in the infrastructure of our built and natural world, Anna uses photography as a tool to interact with her environment and practice new ways of seeing. She has recently exhibited at the University of New Mexico Art Museum, Princeton University, Strata Gallery Santa Fe, and Chung 24 Gallery in San Francisco. Anna’s work has been published by Southwest Contemporary and Lenscratch. This year, she received an honorable mention through the Silver Eye Center for Photography’s Fellowship 24. Her work is in collections such as The Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the SFMOMA Special Collection. Anna’s practice includes working with Collective Constructs, a group of artists and art historians reflecting on how we might contextualize what is unseen through sound, stories, and creative engagement. In her studio and classroom Anna encourages play and experimentation so that learning and growth can launch from the unexpected.