Spirit of Place: San Miguel de Allende
with Douglas Beasley
October 26 – 30, 2026
Course Description
Revitalize your photography while exploring your relationship to your subject, your camera, and yourself. This workshop is about integrating (or perhaps finding) your spiritual practice with your photography practice. Through very specific photo exercises, assignments, readings, and even writing exercises, along with daily field trips, participants learn to deepen a visual awareness while clarifying their approach, making their images both more personal and more meaningful. And often more powerful as well.
Fine-art photographer Douglas Beasley leads this workshop, which provides a unique opportunity to rethink your expectations of what it means to ‘see.’ We work on cultivating simplicity, supporting the notion that a photograph is not ‘taken’ but rather ‘made.’ The image-maker’s mindset and inner landscape are just as important as the outer stimulus or chosen subject. We become better photographers by becoming more in touch with ourselves and then using that awareness to deepen our connection with our subject, whether it’s a person, place, or thing.
This is a challenging invitation to redefine not only what is personally suitable subject matter but our whole approach to image making. Inspiration is sparked by a balance of conversation, meditation, demos, critiques, shared readings, poetry, or whatever creative means necessary. Photographic exercises, assignments, and image reviews are a big part of this experience. These are site-specific and are concerned with both internal and external experience and growth. Most afternoons are spent in the field with Doug on daily photo adventures.
If you’ve taken Doug’s popular Zen & the Art of Photography class in the past and want to revisit the concepts and exercises, this is the perfect place to delve back in. You don’t need a Zen practice or have any spiritual practice at all to benefit from this workshop. You just need to show up and be curious.
The beautiful colonial city of San Miguel de Allende and the dramatic surrounding countryside play a big part in this workshop as a week of total immersion in your own artistic development.
Additional Information
WHO SHOULD ATTEND:
What You Should Know:
Working knowledge of digital workflow and manual mode on your digital SLR or mirrorless camera. Participants must be able to download and select images using image editing software for class sessions.
Special Notes:
Participants should plan to arrive in San Miguel de Allende no later than Sunday evening, October 25. Workshop check-in is first thing Monday morning, followed by breakfast and orientation. The workshop ends on Friday evening, October 30, with a final dinner; travel home should be scheduled for no earlier than Saturday, October 31.
Participants in this workshop may want to consider staying on in San Miguel for the Photographing Día de los Muertos Festivities program starting on Saturday, October 31.
Visit the San Miguel Campus page on our website for details on accommodations, meals, transportation, and more.
Activity Level:
Policies:
View Payment, Refund, Withdrawal, and Transfer Policies for this International Program.
Accommodations:
We encourage participants to stay on campus at Hotel Posada de la Aldea for ease of proximity to workshop activities and well-priced rooms. Double accommodations (for couples or friends taking workshops together) are $415 per person for 6 nights (approximately $70 per person, per night), Sunday through Friday, or $830 per person, single accommodations for 6 nights (approximately $140 per night), Sunday through Friday. Additional nights at the hotel can be arranged for participants; please discuss needs with the Administration Office in Santa Fe.
Package Price INFO:
$2,995 (USD) includes tuition, breakfast Monday through Saturday, lunch Monday through Friday, final dinner on Friday, and model/location/materials fees if applicable to the class. Hotel accommodations are not included in the package price; see details above.
about
Douglas Beasley’s personal vision explores the spiritual and emotional aspects of people and place and is concerned with how the sacred is recognized and expressed in everyday life.
After receiving a BFA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Doug worked for several prominent commercial photo studios as a photo assistant and darkroom slave. Both helped him develop an appreciation for attention to detail and technical proficiency, but left him longing for artistic self-expression. He then opened his own studio in Minneapolis, MN, emphasizing commercial and editorial fashion. As a strong feminist, he considers himself the world’s most unlikely fashion photographer, but greatly enjoyed the creativity and spontaneity of fashion photography. This evolved into shooting extensively throughout the country and internationally for various advertising, educational, public service, and non-profit clients. Doug currently works on fine-art-based commercial projects around the world.
Much of Doug’s personal work is supported by grants and commissions and is widely exhibited and collected. He is the owner and publisher of Shots Magazine, a quarterly independent journal of fine-art photography, now in its 32nd year of publication. Doug continues to explore the notion of what is sacred in his photography and in his life. He lives in a small passive solar home surrounded by rocks and trees in Saint Paul, MN, and when not out traveling the world, he can be found tending his Japanese gardens or enjoying a strong cup of coffee while listening to loud music. Personal heroes include Jimi Hendrix, the Dalai Lama, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and whoever invented the espresso machine.
Website: douglasbeasley.com
Instagram: @dbeasleyphoto
