Night photography is synonymous with mystery and the unconscious. The dark draws us inward for self-reflection. These themes are heightened in this unusual time of quarantine. For many of us our cameras are our best tools for better understanding ourselves, our loved ones, and the world around us.
Whether we are using the ambient light of street lamps, moonlight, or we are introducing a light source into the scene using strobes or flashlights, photographing at night reveals a new world—one not visible during the day.
Exploring the Secrets of the Night is a six-week, collaborative, online experience with fine-art photographer Jason Langer. Classroom sessions combine technical discussions and demonstrations with image presentations and digital darkroom tips. Jason’s weekly assignments can be easily completed around home. Image reviews happen the following week with the goal of developing a concise body of photographs investigating and celebrating image making at night.
Working knowledge of your camera; all camera formats welcome. Participants must be able to download and select images using image editing software for class sessions.
Class will meet 12:30 – 2:30 pm (Mountain Time) on Wednesdays starting June 7 and ending July 12 (six online group sessions). Enrollment is limited to 12 participants.
Zoom Video Conferencing software (available for no charge from Zoom.com) will be used to facilitate the class sessions. Further details will be emailed to registrants.
Santa Fe Workshops always aims to produce a high-quality experience for our online attendees. That said, variables including regional and local internet provider speeds, traffic on Zoom's servers, and your own computing hardware can contribute to a less than ideal streaming event. While we do our best to minimize the impact of these variables, they are outside the control of Santa Fe Workshops.
View Withdrawal and Transfer Policies for online programs.
For the convenience of participants, recordings of each class session are posted privately for one month after the end of each session. Santa Fe Workshops takes the recordings down after one month to protect the intellectual property of our instructors.
Jason Langer is best known for his psychological and noirish visions of contemporary urban life. Secret City, his first monograph published by Nazraeli Press, depicts night and dusk scenes of various cities with “carefully crafted compositions reminiscent of the symbolist photographers, and swathes of meticulously printed deep black tones characteristic of the gelatin silver process…as much Hopper and Raymond Chandler as Steichen” (Bomb Magazine).
Over the past two decades Langer has developed a photographic language which has been described variously as “cinematic” and “poetic,” “contemplative” and “iconographic,” as well as “haunting” and “romantic.” Avoiding staged tableaux on the one hand, and the “deadpan” aesthetic popular in much contemporary photography on the other, his images strive always to capture the unanticipated or chance moment, layered with timeless drama and dynamism.
He has published three monographs: Secret City (2006, Nazraeli Press) and Possession (2013, Nazraeli Press) and Twenty Years (Radius Books, 2015), spanning 20 years of his career. It is the first survey of his work.
A popular workshop instructor, Jason is also part of our Mentorship Program »
Website: jasonlanger.com
Instagram: @jlangerphotos
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