Location: The Aegean Center for the Fine Arts, Paros, Greece

June 2008: 12 days / 3 - 14 June

July 2008: 15 days / 6 - 20 July

Enrollment: 6

Fees June: 1,800 Euro

Fees July: 2,250 Euro

SUMMER '08 APPLICATION
We are using a PDF application form to minimize spam. Download and send the completed application to the Center. Insturctions are on the application form.

INCLUDES
• Tuition
• Single studio apartment at our beautiful Aegean Center Village
• Breakfast at the Symposium Cafe
• All local transportation and fees for scheduled outings
• Use of digital lab
• First box of paper: 20 sheets A3 (11.7x16.5 in.) Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
• High-speed internet access
• Welcoming Evening and Taverna Meal
• A Day on the Aegean - in the Center's traditional Kaiki (boat)

REQUIREMENTS
• Basic working knowledge of Adobe Photoshop
• A digital camera with RAW capture capability
• A sense of adventure
• A desire to learn and grow

GENERAL COURSE OUTLINE
The course will include thoughts, discussion, and practice on the digital photography process with the aim of producing a final fine print.

We will work through the entire digital photography workflow, including calibrating your monitor, and building color profiles for the paper on which we will be printing.

We will discuss how the choices we make during the process have a profound effect on our intentions as photographic seers, poets, and artists. From capture to finished print, how the use of technical control informs our creative voice and ideas; the choice of paper, sizing, inks and formating are all of paramount importance in expressing our ideas. Craft is essential to the creative process.

I believe far too many students of photography, and the visual arts in general, have been encouraged to consider the idea of 'craft' as unimportant, a barrier even, to the creative process. I stand firmly and definitively on the other side of that fence. In my classes at the Aegean Center I conduct a simple exercise with the students to illustrate this point. A month or so into the semester I ask students to tell me how they are feeling about their experience thus far. I ask for a detailed description of the good and troubling aspects of the experience, their complex and subtle feelings. They are given a 30 minute coffee break in which to think about what they would like to express. When it's time to begin sharing our thoughts I present them with one more important proviso, they must express themselves in the Greek language only. As the majority of our students are international English speakers and do not speak Greek they look at me as if I'm mad. I ask if anyone is capable of expressing even the simplest idea let alone a deeper emotion in Greek. Then I ask them if they can do so in their own language. A sigh of relief. When I ask them why they can do so in their mother tongue and not in Greek, they site the obvious reasons.

The point of the exercise is simple, without a working knowledge of a language we are capable of expressing only the most rudimentary and minimal of ideas. It is no different with any language, including the language of photography. Without a practiced knowledge of craft we become easily stuck, repetitive, incapable of growth. We usually settle with one or two ideas we have happened upon or are trying to imitate. We can only grow in our chosen medium if we have deep knowledge of the craft involved and are able to express the whole gamut of sensitivities from the loud and simple to the soft and complex.

Don't let the emphasis on technique give you the idea this course is only about the mechanics of process. The true goal is to produce poetic images which speak directly about our feelings and ideas of what we encounter as photographers; not emoting or mere demonstration of technical virtuosity.

When a combination of keen observation, practiced knowledge of craft and having something to say, even a notion of having something to say, coalesce the chances are very good that you will be able to create a poetic image.

John Pack
Paros
2008