Our Photo Critique Room
with Don Werthmann
January 9 – February 13, 2026
Course Description
Making art and viewing art are different at their core. That’s obvious, but what arrests many practitioners of photography is being conversant and knowing what to think or say when gazing at your favorite medium, let alone other forms of visual art. In this six-week online workshop, you venture together into a realm to understand visual art better and learn how to talk about photographs. This compelling and collaborative space is your critique room.
Piloted by Don Werthmann, each weekly Zoom session begins with a group discussion of a short reading by noted art critics and authors designed to guide your mindset, form comprehension and protocol, and develop the language for critiquing photographs and visual art of any kind.
After forming this critical common ground and some rules of engagement, you critique each other’s images with an informed sense of tact, sophistication, and confidence to constructively express what you think. This safe learning environment stimulates your mind to soar above how images are made to critically examine other artistic visions, refine your own vision, discover meanings, and ultimately realize how integral these processes are to your growth and development as a visual artist.
You are introduced to concepts and goals through thinking assignments, then apply them by engaging in critique and sharing your own images. Each session offers time for you to collaborate in Miro, become conversant with the language of critique, and obtain important feedback.
Light reading, writing, and photo assignments between sessions generate further insights about organizing existing images and/or producing new images to inspire moving a collection or project to the next level of development. You join Don and a small group of dedicated photographers from across the country to schedule a flight in your critique room. All genres and subject matter are welcome, including lens-based fine art, portraiture, lifestyle, editorial, commercial work, and yes, even AI-generated imagery. After these six insightful weeks, you don’t see your own photography or the work of others the same way again.
Additional Information
WHO SHOULD ATTEND:
What You Should Know:
Basic computer skills and the ability to edit and download images using editing software are necessary.
Students must download Miro Collaboration Workspace, a free cloud-based application available at miro.com, which is used throughout all class sessions. Login credentials are emailed to registrants.
Special Notes:
Class will meet 10:00 am – 1:00 pm (Mountain Time) on Fridays starting January 9 and ending February 13 (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.
Policies:
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.
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about
Don Werthmann is a Professional Photography Faculty member in the Digital Media Arts Department at Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor, and over the past twenty-five years, he has taught a wide range of courses. Among his favorites are the project and portfolio development experiences for students to organize their collections of work for the first time and realize that their images are not just objects; they are ideas.
In 2024, Don was the recipient of a statewide Outstanding Faculty Award by the Michigan Occupational Dean’s Advisory Council, which recognizes exceptional teaching practices, professional achievements, and service to his college. A passion and appreciation for various forms of visual art and art history emerged when he was a teenager, which eventually led him to earn BFA and MA degrees in Photography from Wayne State University in Detroit. His career spans over forty years across commercial, editorial, photo education, film, and digital eras, web design, studio and location lighting, and most recently, handbound bookmaking.
Before launching a college teaching career, Don arrived at Santa Fe Workshops as a participant in 1991. He returned in 1994 as their Operations Manager and a workshop instructor until the close of the decade. 2026 is Don’s seventh year of teaching at SFW, and he is thrilled to offer this online experience.
Don’s images are infused with curiosity, the lyricism of everyday life, and a naturally unfolding tapestry of events presented to the camera—a genre known as lyric documentary. He self-published a handbound book of original photography entitled, To Think Outloud: The Collection of Visual Poems for Visual Literacy. One iteration or another of the Quatrain Project is visible by following a link noted below.
Website: quatrainfotographic.com
Instagram: @don_werthmann
