The Language of Light Painting
with Chanette Manso
September 10 – October 15, 2025
Course Description
With light as your brush and darkness as your canvas, this online workshop invites you into a playful, surreal exploration of image-making, like you’ve never experienced before. Led by multidisciplinary artist Chanette Manso, this six-week program immerses you in the experimental world of light painting, where photography transforms into a performance of motion, color, and surprise. The process stays entirely in-camera, using a layered approach that mirrors Photoshop but relies on choreography and planning instead of digital manipulation.
Our atmosphere is playful and full of discovery. Light painting opens a space where the unexpected becomes part of the creative process. Through repetitive, flowing gestures, you develop a sense of rhythm and control with light.
Assignments and image reviews guide your progress and support creative exploration. Alongside hands-on work, you explore the history of light painting through a variety of influential artists and techniques from around the world. Projects include drawing with light, designing illuminated figures, building light tools from upcycled materials, and creating surreal scenes with still-life setups, portraits, landscapes, and stencils.
You leave the workshop with a collection of experimental images and a deeper understanding of how expressive and open-ended this medium can be. The process expands your creative toolkit, shifts your perspective, and opens up endless possibilities for continued exploration long after the course ends.
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:
Class will meet 5:30 – 7:30 pm (Mountain Time) on Wednesdays starting September 10 and ending October 15 (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
Chanette Manso is a multidisciplinary artist known for her vivid, dreamlike light paintings that transform and reimagine reality. Working primarily in-camera, she choreographs hand-held lights around her subjects in darkness to create immersive performances, video works, and archival prints.
Born in Beijing in 1966 to French and American parents, Chanette has exhibited internationally since the early 1990s—including at the Palais de Tokyo Photography Museum and UNESCO’s International Day of Light. She co-founded the French Light Painting League, published the book Velvet Warriors, and curated the Brooklyn group show Wear Dark Clothes: Light Painters. Her work has been recognized with awards like the Mediterranean Photo Contest and featured in outlets like Licht and Wired.
Now based in New York, Chanette collaborates with tech and fashion innovators such as threeASFOUR, House of Yes, and Wieden+Kennedy, while continuing to push her light-based practice toward large-scale public works.
Website: chanettemanso.com/cha/select-works
