Last month I had the incredible opportunity to participate in a Maine Media workshop, held via Zoom, with Dr. Rebecca Senf who is the Chief Curator at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, in Tucson. The workshop, Building the Curator - Fine Art Photographer Relationship comprised of two three-hour sessions with 8 participating photographers. The first session started with Dr. Senf talking about herself and her role as a curator. In the second half of the session the participating photographers shared their work with the group. Dr. Senf critiqued presentations and then during the week between the two sessions Dr. Senf reviewed written artist statement we provided her and reviewed everyone's websites in detail. The second session began with critiques of our sites and submissions and finished with an open discussion period.

This was the best education experiences of my photography career since I graduated from college. To have so much quality time with one of the top curators in the world, giving valuable insight to the curator’s perspective, then reviewing my work’s web presence was priceless. There was also a great benefit in listening to the critiques of the other seven photographer. When I say she reviewed our websites it was obvious she spent at least twenty minutes on every one of our sites and more time than that reviewing our written work. I have met Dr. Senf, Becky, a number of times and I had high expectations for this workshop, she exceeded those expectations tenfold. I normally wouldn’t write a post about this since it has already occurred, but Becky said she really enjoyed the experience and is hopeful to do more of these workshops in the future. For any serious photographer who is mid-career or established I highly recommend participating in this workshop if you see it available in the future. I signed up as soon as I saw Becky make a post about it and it sold out quickly, I am so happy I didn’t hesitate.

Becky said throughout this workshop, networking and developing relationships is the key to obtaining success for most anything. Through the workshop experience I got to know seven other interesting photographers, I have listed their website links below and I encourage you to visit their sites to see their work. We are a stylistically diverse group which helped to make the workshop that much more interesting.