Tight Editing of Your Work – Veracruz - Mexico

After the first great editing workshop in New York, this year the course venue moves to the beautiful city of Veracruz, which has recently become our new home. The structure of the workshop will remain the same. In the free time, I’ll show you around Veracruz; we will have the opportunity to eat together, go for a swim in the pool and hang out as always.

It’s advised to arrive to Veracruz a day earlier to get some rest and acclimate yourself. I can help you arrange for accommodation in town if you want. Below the course description.

The more I teach the more I realize how difficult it is to edit your own work. I strongly feel that editing is the photographers’ Achilles heel. How many books have we seen, including our own, that could have been much better if we would have done a better editing of our images?

It will be a very intense workshop where we will explore the many aspects of bringing a group of coherent and consistent photographs together. We will look at 20 students’ contact sheets and some of mine, to learn more about the photographer’s approach, his framing, his intentions, his ability to discern from the flow of life in the attempt, often vain, to extract its essence. We will critically analyze several important photographic books pointing out what makes them special and also underscoring the causes of the lowering of tension within the book created by many factors among which the inclusion of less powerful images, the wrong pairing of images, bad graphic choices.

I will look at your best images, at your long-term projects. I’ll help you eliminate the weaker images, the repetitive photographs that dilute the impact of the good ones. I will assist you in the critical sequencing and pacing of each image. I will also share with you the intricacies of making a book including the selection of the best images, its layout, the sizing and the combination of images and text. I imagine this class as a weeklong intense photographic session in which we will listen to the many voices within the group. We will set very high standards for each participant’s body of work in order to reach a combination of strong images that will flow in a harmonious way.

By the end of the week, you will become the editors and will help me editing my ongoing book project on Cuba. Only students who have taken at least two workshops with me or experienced photographers who have worked on long-term project can participate. I already know that we will be breaking new ground; your photographic vision will be greatly heightened by this workshop. Be advised to book your spot well in advance because space is limited and it will fill up quickly.

Refund Policy
I rely on your attendance to organize many of the workshops’ logistics, so if for any reason you decide to no longer attend the workshop, please notify me at least 60 days before the start of the workshop. At that time I will refund your deposit less a $200 cancellation fee. If you cancel between 30 and 60 days before the start of the workshop I will retain $600 dollars of your workshop fee. If notification is made less than 30 days before the start of the workshop no monies will be refunded to you.

Please note that in case of exceptional and unforeseeable circumstances such as hurricanes, earthquakes, major floods, tsunami, a war or governments' change of policies in the countries I teach courses, BazanPhotos will only offer as a refund a new workshop in any of the other venues during that same calendar year. No other forms of refunds will be available.

For further information on the workshops and the cost of the 10-day workshop please write to workshops@bazanphotos.com or ernesto_bazan@hotmail.com