Workshops
Foto Forum Santa Fe Workshops
Workshops in processes that range from the earliest history of photography to cutting-edge digital.
Workshops are taught in our downtown Santa Fe location with portrait studio up front and fully-equipped darkroom in the rear with 1-5 students per workshop.
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Most workshop lengths can be customized to accommodate your schedule and needs in these increments:
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Half day: 2 hour session. Good for refresher courses or to get a solid introduction to the topic.
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Full day: 7 hour session (with 1hr lunch break). Ideal for covering a lot of ground and becoming proficient in a new process.
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Two day: 14 hour session over two days. Perfect for a deep dive into a complex process.
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How does it work?
Choose from among our workshops listed below, add it to your cart and choose to either pay for the full amount or a 50% deposit. Once your order has been received you will be contacted by Sage Paisner sage@fotoforumsantafe.com to schedule an available date that works with your schedule.
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Visiting Artist Workshops
We also schedule visiting artist workshops with talented photographers who are ready to share their technical knowledge with a small group 1-5 interested students. See Visiting Artist Workshop Schedule below for upcoming events.
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Great Gift Idea!
One of the best gifts you can receive is an experience. Have a photographer in your life that would benefit from spending a day being exposed to an amazing new way to express their photography. Purchase a workshop below and have them reach out to register.
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Workshop Categories
Click the links to jump to that category on this page
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Reviews by artist
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Maria Finitzo
"Foto Forum is a great place to learn. Sage is a thoughtful patient teacher who knows so much about historical printing processes. He opened up a million creative possibilities for my work."
Isabel Winson- Sagan
"I love that Foto Forum exists! Such a great resource for local photographers. A friend and I did a private workshop where we learned the historical tintype process, and had a blast. Sage has also helped me with printing my digital work from home. I'm looking forward to taking more workshops!"
Katy Gross
"Foto Forum is an amazing resource and venue in Santa Fe dedicating to showcasing photography in all its forms and formats. I took a private workshop in making tin types and had such an amazing experience. I learned about the history, the chemistry and came out with some amazing work. Sage Paisner is so knowledgeable and supportive of photographic artists in our community."
Visiting Artist Workshop Schedule
We host Visiting Artist Workshops with talented photographers who are ready to share their technical knowledge with a small group 1-5 interested students. Any scheduled workshops are listed below. Make sure to follow us on Instagram and join our mailing list in order to know about upcoming workshops.
Gelatin-Silver (Traditional Black and White) Workshops
You may refer to it simply as Black and White photography, gelatin-silver emerged as the de facto standard for photograph before color processes began to dominate. If you ever worked in a family darkroom or were exposed to it in high school, this is the b&w process you would have used. With a wide range of commercially available films and darkroom papers, gelatin-silver is the ideal process to master before delving into the hand-coated mix-your-own-chemistry challenges of non-silver.
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We offer workshops in film processing and printing.
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Historical Non-Silver / Alternative Processes Workshops
Before gelatin-silver photographic papers became the standard there were a slew of beautiful formulations that took advantage of light sensitive emulsions coated on metal and paper. Although these 19th Century processes are no longer commercially viable, they have been fully embraced by the artist-photographer as a means of personal expression and are very much alive and thriving today.
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The Foto Forum Santa Fe darkroom has been configured specifically with these alternative processes in mind and we have the ideal facility to learn about these processes without going through the hassle of purchasing an Ultraviolet unit, or waiting long lengths of time for the sun to do its work.
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Bringing the precision of a digital workflow to the poetry of the 19th Century
Due to the insensitive-to-light slow speed emulsions of most of these processes it is necessary to have a negative that is the size of your print for contact printing (no using the enlarger). A recent exciting advancement is the ability to print negatives on an ink-jet printer that are specifically targeted to the process (ex: Cyanotype or Platinum). Thus you can use the precise digital tools to create calibrated negatives that take advantage of the sensitivity of the emulsion. You'll learn about this in more detail in these workshops.
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Portrait & Studio Lighting Workshops
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Photography literally means "a drawing made by light" and the photographers who know how to best utilize the light in the scene, or to manipulate it with artificial lights (continuous and strobes), are able to create the kind of drawings that they envision. Our half and full day workshops are designed to make you comfortable with the fundamentals of lighting ratios, the quality of light, and how to break the rules to meet your personal vision.
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View Camera Workshops
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Building off their portable Camera Lucida predecessors, the first cameras were simple boxes with a lens on one side and a spot to hold the photographic plate on the other made in a variety of sizes from the early bicycle cameras to gargantuan banquet cameras capable of holding glass plates over 30 inches wide. Far from a relic, the modern view camera is still being manufactured today and offers the photographer controls and resolution unlike anything else. Book a 8x10 or 4x5 View Camera workshop and learn how to get the most from these wonderful tools.
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Digital Workshops
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Photographers have the luxury of being able to choose to make work using chemical processes that were perfected over 150 years ago or using the latest innovations in electronic imaging—and any combination in between. Our digital workshops are designed to help you get the most from your digital camera, the scans of your negatives, and your digital printer.
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