Non-Stop Action at Our Slow Food Workshop in Umbria

photography workshop italy umbria
Jeff Zaruba and I arrived in Umbria a few days before the workshop began to scout locations with our Italian assistant Lorenzo. Those first couple of days were busy, but they were nothing compared to the non-stop action once the workshop began.
We had 10 students in the group and one of the students brought along his wife. On our first day of shooting, we went to a bed and breakfast we’d scouted a year ago. The location is extremely picturesque and Eleanora was all ready for us: The kitchen was set up for us to shoot while she prepared lunch, and she’d planned a wonderful menu.

Fading Traditions: Papua New Guinea in Color

Fran Meckler Papua New Guinea documentary photography
Photographer Fran Meckler is passionate about her social documentary work—she’s visited more than 70 countries over her career. Her latest images were made during a two-week trip to Papua New Guinea where she documented in vivid color the changing landscape, the lives of many different tribes and what is still left of tribal life in the 21st century, and the mystery of that very foreign culture.
In a new exhibition at the World Affairs Council in San Francisco, Fran will show 25 images from the trip, printed by The Image Flow.

Getting to the Heart of Slow Food in Umbria

slow food umbria assisi
Stuart Schwartz recently spent three days with his family in Umbria, Italy, as part of a scouting trip for a new workshop next summer focused on the Slow Food movement and the local Italian lifestyle.
“My goal is to create a workshop in which we’ll create an accurate portrait of Umbria—the people, lifestyle, landscape, and architecture—but also get an intimate experience of what it’s like to actually live in Umbria, if even for only a short time,” writes Stuart.

Photographing Cuba: Beyond Expectations

Photography in Cuba, photographing Cuba
The Image Flow is back from our second (perhaps annual) workshops in Cuba. There were new experiences, old friends, and of course a night at the Tropicana. The group came home exhilarated and stimulated and with a portfolio of work even beyond our own expectations. Stuart Schwartz fills us in.
We wanted to build on the success of our first photography workshop in Cuba in April 2015, and this past February organized two more back to back, Cuba: Behind Closed Doors and The Havana Highway: Rum, Cars & Cigars. It was particularly satisfying to us as organizers that all six participants from last April signed up again, and we added to that some great new faces, including two old friends of mine who joined us all the way from Switzerland.
Both sessions turned out to be just ideal, from student participation to the variety of shooting opportunities. Of course there were glitches, as there will be when organizing a group of people—especially in Cuba—but it’s a testament to both our local guides Ramses and Alex and the go-with-the-flow attitude of the group that no matter what came up, we made the best of it. Ramses Batista, a renowned photographer in his own right, was our man on the ground; he’d make a call, and all of a sudden we were in a private apartment shooting portraits of a fascinating individual. Often, those little glitches served to make our experience even more authentic and unique.

5 Tips on How to Photograph a Usual Place in an Unusual Way

Maui Haleakala Flow Photography Tips
Ever get up at the crack of dawn and haul out of the hotel/condo/AirBnb with a cup of coffee and camera and haul down to a beautiful beach or center of a quaint Eastern European city ready to take the perfect sunrise photography, only to be overcome with the feeling that it’s already been done? Here, travel photographer Jeff Zaruba offers five tips for turning the ordinary into extraordinary.

Retouching the Life & Times of America’s Postcard King

Mike Roberts Wish You Were Here America's Postcard King
In Wish You Were Here, author Bob Roberts details the life and work of his father Mike Roberts, which spanned more than 50 years. A self-taught pioneer in the development of color photography and printing, Mike was a 20th-century icon known as America’s Postcard King.
Lightroom expert and in-house retouching specialist Taralynn Lawton worked three years to retouch 70 of Mike’s historic color and black and white images.
“There was one piece that we had from the cover of a Disneyland magazine. It was really a disaster and she patched up the color and the image so that you have no idea,” says Bob.

Ink on Paper: Catherine Karnow Exhibits 25 Years of Vietnam

Anthony Fendler Catherine Karnow exhibition-quality printing Vietnam retrospective
Photographer Catherine Karnow has made a name for herself shooting surprising and thought-provoking images of Vietnam since 1990. Her new retrospective will open at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Hong Kong March 9.
Catherine is well known in Vietnam: She began shooting in the country in 1990, and calls the late General Giap a personal friend. In 1994, she was the only foreign journalist invited to accompany him privately to Dien Bien Phu, the site of the battle that won Vietnam independence from the French.

A Cuban Will Give You the Shirt Off His Back

Working out of Ramses Fiat Lunch Box All the photo gear on the roof
Jock McDonald went to Cuba for the first time in 1990 with Bernardo Gonzalez, the son of Mexican Minister of Culture Juan Francisco Gonzalez. The elder Gonzalez had had become somewhat of a mentor to Jock on Latin American culture after giving him his first retrospective show in Mexico. “Juan Francisco said to me, ‘You’ll never understand Latin America if you don’t understand Cuba,’” Jock recalls.
“But he said, ‘I’m not going, I’m married. I’m going to have my son take you.’ I will never forget the look in his son’s eyes, the look that said, ‘I’m not taking a gringo to Cuba!’” Jock laughs.
Since 1990, photographer he has made some 50 trips to Cuba. What keeps him coming back, are the friendships he has found.