I have been teaching for 8 years now, and I remember my first workshop like it was yesterday.

I used to shoot in this old warehouse. Half of it was still being used for some sort of materials company. I waltzed in one day and asked the owner if I could take pictures in the back of his shop. He said yes, and so a wonderful collaboration was born. I took pictures there countless times, even brought a dance crew there to photograph them…

And then, when I decided to host my first workshop (planning commenced in June 2010) I asked him if I could bring my workshop group there.

HUGE liabilities aside (it being a decrepit warehouse), he said yes, I announced my workshop, and it remains one of the neatest locations I’ve ever used.

I remember carefully planning out every single minute of the day. I remember feeling extremely confident in my curriculum. I remember freaking the heck out over my organization skills, if anyone would show up, and if they would find it valuable. I charged $200 a person and we did everything from inspiration exercises to shooting to editing.

My workshop structure has changed little since that first one. I spent hours upon hours planning it out and it worked.

I’ve been fortunate enough to teach at major conventions, go around the world with these workshops, and prattle about at Creative Live (it was an honor to teach their first fine art class).

You have trusted me, given me so much love, too many hugs to begin counting, friendships made, and experiences that have filled my 20s with so much appreciation. I’ve visited 21 countries on hundreds of trips. It has been out of this world.

Why give it up?

The answer isn’t what you may think.

On one hand, it is. I need to stop traveling so much. I need a break. I need to be home. I’m homesick even when I’m home because I know it’s just a week until my next trip.

But on the other hand, it is something very different that took a lot of growing up to realize.

When you teach your craft, you learn your craft intimately. It was the best decision I could have made to really, truly understand what I’m doing, and why. Nothing else compares, not hours of shooting or editing. It’s repeating that information in a digestible way that allowed me to understand my craft as well as I do. And how well I understand my craft, which I daresay is extremely well, is why I’m leaving teaching behind for now.

I’m in a new period of creative exploration. The baby stages. I don’t know what I’m doing yet. I explore it every single day. I’m not ready to teach it because I’m just getting to know it.

It’s like we’re getting tea for the first time, awkwardly not knowing if we should shake hands or hug, and we’re making small talk.

Some big conversations are coming on soon.

After that, I’ll be ready.

I’ll be ready to teach my new craft. I don’t know if it will be massively different or the same. I anticipate teaching writing workshops as well, something that, in more ways than you’ll understand, fulfills my childhood dreams.

But for now, I wait.

I don’t know if this break from teaching will last 2 months or 2 years. All I can say is that I am grateful beyond belief for your support thus far, for letting me guide you into the deepest realms of creativity, and for standing by me as I pursued this path.

I’ll continue on with my blog posts and videos, of course. But as for in-person education – that will have to wait until I’ve met my creativity, stared it in the face, and learned every wrinkle inside and out.

If you’ve been to a workshop, please comment below and let me know where we met!

(And maybe even your experience!)

If you’ve been to a class of mine, even if it was online, this is what I want you to know about me: I give everything. I am not someone who fears. I am someone who gives because I would rather see people uplifted and empowered rather than held back by knowledge that I could give but do not because I am afraid. I do not say that in vanity, I say it because it is a trait that I hold in high esteem and because I have built my life on that foundation. For my many, many flaws, this is where I hold my head high.

Teaching has taught me the kind of person I want to be. It is not someone who holds secrets close and guarded; it is someone who shares openly, with a heart like a sponge, who listens and aids and feels deeply. Thank you for letting me do this. It is an honor for which I cannot properly express my gratitude.

Want to take a class from me? While I am on hiatus from in-person education, I have classes on Creative Live that are extremely comprehensive and fulfilling:

WEEK 1

WEEK 2

Here are my top tips for storytelling:

Post your stories in the comments of this blog post, and have fun!

I’d love to see your favorite editing tips!
Share a bit of your process in the comments so we can all learn from each other!

I hope you have a very inspired week!

Model: Jen Brook

While shooting on the eve of the first day, we gathered in our hotel meeting space. A boring room with boring lighting and boring furniture. Nonetheless, I was determined to kick off the shooting by taking a self-portrait of myself laying on a table, to later composite on top of a giant mushroom.

Soon everyone started shooting, taking their cameras out and snapping a few shots here and there. I offered myself up as a subject to get the ball rolling, and in no time I found myself balancing on a chair, being suffocated in fabric, and posing for the picture you see above.

The person who took it, Beth Olson, also took another on the last day of our class. There is a stark difference between the two, and in the most perfect way possible, she captured the two sides of how I feel…perhaps without realizing it, or perhaps she did. In the top image I am fragile and contemplative, and in the next I am curious and imaginative. That is me, inside and out. Shy, daydreamer, fragile, imaginative…all of these things rolled into two images.

Isn’t it so amazing how an image can capture something so true about a person. I take many self-portraits, and as a result I feel that I know myself very well. I understand what makes me who I am, and I often try to capture a part of that in an image. But when someone else steps in to take a few shots, and they get it so exactly right, I can’t help but smile and nod. That’s me.

Thank you Beth and everyone else who shared in our beautiful adventures those few days. The photos that resulted are wonderful and I am grateful to have been a part of it.

When I finished editing the image on air, and the cameras went off, everyone in the room let out a big sigh. We all knew it didn’t really work out but we were happy we tried. When I got home from Seattle I decided to start editing it again. I tried twice more and it still wasn’t coming together. That was when I took a slightly different approach.

I started choosing new shots to work with – a higher angle of my subject as well as different house shots from the kiddie pool so that you could see more of the house under the water, thus adding to the believability effect. Those changes made a world of difference for me, fixing some perspective issues as well as changing what was a very static shot.

I have been on a book kick lately, really wanting to experiment with how books (stories, really) can transport you to another reality. Books are old, universally recognized, and provide an amazing symbol for anyone to latch on to. There are many different emotions attached to books, but one thing remains the same. If you read, you take your imagination to a different level. What an amazing metaphor for creating.

I ended up using all of the same techniques to edit this image when I was home as I did during the CreativeLive editing segment for this picture. Some of the featured tools were the Background Eraser Tool, Curves Adjustment Layers, and changing of the Lighting Dynamics. I think something that brought the image together for me in the end was the choice of clouds, and really creating a light source as well as light variation so that some of the image was in darkness and some in light.

Thankfully the light for this image was quite natural, with no extreme highlights or shadows, so changing the light slightly was not a problem. Of course, I can’t say if the image did ever come together or not, but it did satisfy a dream I’ve had. I always know when a picture is finished when I feel it matches what I saw in my imagination…so I want to thank you for watching and for supporting this photo shoot through your encouraging words as well as to CreativeLive for setting this up for me!

In all of this craziness, with the year coming to a close and inspiration running deep in my veins, I decided I could use some simplicity this week for my Promoting Passion video. I recorded my screen while editing my latest picture, though it froze a quarter of the way through so I finished the video by including screen grabs of the editing process thereafter. Sometimes all I need to feel the calm is some inspiring music and the reminder that life moves at the pace we set, and we always have the option to change it. But right now, I’m going to enjoy each minute and taking home a lesson from every journey.

…take a moment to savor the beauty in your life.

Create something unexpected. Do something to remind yourself how amazing the world is. Take a walk. Make a piece of art. Give someone a hug. And above all, create your dreams.

It was a heck of a 7 days, and while I’m happy to be home now, I had a really happy time. I think that’s the right word – happy. I was just happy. Every. Single. Day.

Here is a little overview from my creativeLIVE class. I started with some basics of how to dress a model with ace bandages, creepy cloth (freaky fabric), and bed sheets. Shooting all on a dark background for drama, to make the baby powder stand out, and to more easily add a new location into the background, I photographed many different setups using these simple props.

I went out to pick beach grass (could be anything that has structure) in order to put the grass/flowers into some Styrofoam that I purchased the night before. This created a field effect that anyone can use in any form they wish – shooting children, seniors, portraits, etc…all with the convenience of being inside your home or studio. Also wonderful for those who are not around a lot of nature.

The first image in this post was shot during the “baby powder” portion of my creativeLIVE class. I decided to take the simple image of a girl wearing a blue bed sheet further to create a night sky, moon, and strong red flowing dress.

We ended with some cobweb and paint to show how painting someone’s body (any color) can add interesting texture and transform them into a character. I didn’t have enough time to finesse that image (when your producer is holding a “5 minutes!!” sign, one tends to listen). So I’ll give that another go at home and share how I would love for it to turn out. In the meantime, I hope some of these techniques prove fun and useful…and have an inspired weekend!

 What is your favorite $10 or less item to use creatively?

Isn’t int incredible how much we can do? I haven’t scratched the surface of what could be done to bring my imagination to life, and thinking about the possibilities makes me giddy with excitement. I can go out and create something singlehandedly that could express what words cannot. I say “I” selfishly as I write on my own blog, but of course I mean that to extend to all people with any craft. Photography allows me a medium in which I feel comfortable working. But I believe that anything in life that allows you to feel complete and understood is an art form.

Creating this image was fun and simple. I love pictures like that. No crazy setup (aside from dragging all of these vines into an abandoned seminary). No strange Photoshop work of putting body parts together. No flying girls or anything “fancy”. Just a girl standing trapped (or maybe willingly blended) into the scene. It felt, to me, the right kind of simple for what I wanted to say.

What does your fantasy world look like? If you could wake up and see anything, hear anything, smell anything…what would it be? Do you work to create that reality?

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You can watch the creation process of this image, and some of the editing slowed down, on my creativeLIVE class “Master Your Craft” – you can look at both of my cL classes in the STORE on this blog.

Special thanks to Jane Love for modeling, Nikoma Souza for hair/makeup, and the whole creativeLIVE team for just plain being amazing and allowing me to do this.