Why Aren’t You Taking the Photographs You Want to Take?

You may already know how to make a good photograph. That may not be the problem. The harder question is why you aren’t making the photographs you really want to make.

In this new online workshop with photographer, educator, curator, and author Thomas Werner, we look at what gets in the way of making the work we really want to make.

Even when starting out, most photographers reach a point where technical ability is no longer enough. We repeat what has worked before, imitate work that we love, or become too conscious of our audience. We wait for inspiration. We abandon projects too quickly or continue them long after they have stopped being interesting. We spend time becoming good at making photographs we no longer want to make.

Whether an amateur photographer or advanced, this workshop is about identifying what is getting in the way.

Beginning with your current work and drawing from the philosophy and process put forward in the book Twenty One Summers, we examine the distance between the photographs you are making and the photographs you want to make. We look at intention, habits, influences, comfort, ambition, editing, audience, and the decisions—conscious and unconscious—that shape your photographic practice. The objective is not simply to make better photographs. It is to become more deliberate about what you photograph, why you photograph it, and what you want the work to become.

Over three sessions, we examine your existing work, identify patterns and obstacles in your creative process, develop or reconsider project ideas, make new photographs between sessions, and return to the group to evaluate what changed and what didn’t.

You may arrive with an existing project, a new idea, or simply a sense that something in your work needs to change. You do not need to know the answer before the workshop. Sometimes, finding the right question is where the work begins.