WHAT IS A CREATIVE RETREAT?

Our Creative Retreats are designed to help you re-engage with photography as a way of exploring your inner creativity and create meaningful photographs that show others how you see, feel, and understand the world around you. We will help you see with fresh eyes and encapsulate your essence and the essence of the subject in your photographs. We will focus more on the why, rather than merely the how of photography. 

Our Creative Retreats propose you a very different and rewarding approach: to slow down and create personal work about an inspiring area for a whole week, covering all the steps of the photographic process, from the original message to the final print.

Indeed, light, visual design, composition, post-processing, printing and presentation are not independent steps, but an extension of each other. For this reason, our Creative Retreats have been designed as holistic creative experiences that will combine moments of total immersion in the field with work in the studio and with round table creative discussions among the group members.

Firstly, in the field, you will spend plenty of time exploring and immersing yourself in inspiring environments, carefully chosen by us, having the chance to work with different subject matter and under different conditions. Unrushed, you will be able to slow down, connecting more with the place and allowing your inner landscape to blend with the outer one. 

Then, in the comfort of our lodge, we will spend time critiquing the work we have made in the field, analysing the message and its coherence in our images, finding patterns and traits that reveal our personal vision and finding ways to make our images more expressive. Then, we will spend time post-processing our images and printing them, through and iterative process guided by intent. At the end of our Creative Retreat, we will edit a final selection of our prints and make a hand-made book that we will all take home with us. This will close the creative circle and provide meaning and purpose to a holistic and thorough photographic experience.

During our Creative Retreats, you will benefit from one-to-one tuition from Rafael Rojas. You will learn by doing, taking the reins and tackling every single step of the photographic process, including post-processing, printing, editing and bookmaking. You will also learn thanks to the enriching feedback from other members of the group. Our Creative Retreats create the perfect environment where to engage in enlightening round table discussions about our photographs, sharing and learning from each other how each of us see and photograph the world.    

Because the context is essential to set up an inspiring and creative environment, all our Creative Retreats take place in exclusive, private and high-standing lodges that we book just for our group, with plenty of space to work and organize our creative discussions. These lodges are all ideally placed in magnetic locations surrounded by nature, from where we will have easy access to our working areas. Rather than spending too much time on the road, we will take the most of our time creating out in the field. Because we cannot be creative when we are hungry and because we simply love eating well, we will make sure our Creative Retreats become culinary experiences in themselves. Get ready to a feast of great food and first-class attention to detail.

Our Creative Retreats are the perfect combination to our online MasterCOURSE “Photography with Intent”. In fact, during our Creative Retreats we will refer students back to many concepts discussed in the MasterCOURSE, and for this reason it is strongly recommended that you have enrolled in the MasterCOURSE before or right after the Creative Retreat. It will make your learning experience incredibly more effective and surely become a turning point in your photography.

A HOLISTIC CREATIVE EXPERIENCE

1. PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE FIELD

Photography is not the goal, but the path. Nowa­days, we all rush through our life. We travel fast and we see the world without experiencing it. We think that in order to see more, we need to move faster.­ But the truth is that travelling in time and light, ­travelling through mood and weather is often more rewarding. Feelings and emotions, experiences and souvenirs, are not measured in quantity, but in qua­lity. Slowing down makes you connect more with a place. When you slow down, your inner landscape tends to blend with the outer one. And then, magic happens.

Our Creative Photo Retreats offer a different and more authentic approach: to slow down our pace, to forget about running after photographic trophies and to focus on creating highly personal work about a specific area for a certain number of days.

During our time in the field, we will allow you plenty of time to immerse yourself and work undisturbed unless you need any help. Rafael and Anca are always available for participants, anytime, anywhere, to discuss technical, compositional, artistic, or philosophic aspects while we work in the field. Participants will not only get a lot of hands on tuition from Rafael during the indoor sessions, but they will also have the possibility of seeing how Rafael works, how he visualizes, composes and creates his own photographs in the field.

During this Creative Retreat, you will have the chance to:

• Photograph a wide array of different environments

• Photograph a wide range of different subject matter

• Be taken to the most magical areas, unknown to many people

• Enjoy a slow-down approach that will provide you with plenty of time to create

• Spend less time travelling, and more time creating

• Enjoy a safe and perfectly organized logistics

2. POST-PROCESSING

Post-processing should not be considered a separate step in photography but rather as the continuation, or culmination, of a whole photographic process that started the moment we had an idea in our mind that we wanted to capture in a photograph. During our Creative Photo Retreats, we will study the most important and difficult task for the digital photographer today: knowing what is the intent and final vision we want for the image and what are the adjustments that need to be done in order to get there. All this is independent of the software we use, and will give us the most important foundations of knowledge in order to post-process our images using any kind of software or tools.

During this Creative Retreat, we will teach you how to:

• Hone your post-processing skills in order to create coherent bodies of work

• Use visual design to provide emotional connotations

• Use post-processing to enhance the composition made in the field

• Hone your post-processing skills in order to create coherent bodies of work

• Analyze and plan the post-processing for a given image in terms of message, emotional connotations, visual design, composition and context

• Master the use of global adjustments and local adjustments

• Use post-processing in order to alter and enhance the feeling of balance, depth, rhythm, visual dynamics, visual relationships, harmony and dissonance

• Use intuitively tools like Adobe Lightroom or Adobe Photoshop, without having to rely on trial and error or a process based on rudimentary “like-no like” decisions

3. PRINTING

Printing our photographs cannot be understood as an isolated task, but as the continuation and final culmination of a complete photographic process. If a clear intent will guide us in a converging process during post-processing, in the very end, the same intent and visualized image should guide us through the preparation of the file for printing and the choice of paper and inks.

During our Creative Retreat, we will teach you:

• How to obtain prints that are coherent with your vision and enhance the composition obtained in the field

• What is color-management and how to use it when printing and post-processing

• How to prepare your files for printing: tone and color, sharpening, resizing, etc

• How to soft-proof: testing the suitability of different media and how to make the final adjustments of the files depending on the printing method chosen

• How to evaluate your prints and reassess the post-processing in a cyclic iterative process

4. EDITING AND MAKING A PORTFOLIO

If we were to define the most important quality of a solid project or body of work, consistency would be the word. When we put images together to tell a story or convey a message, we want images that align in a similar register, that approach the subject in a consistent way, images that do not break the rhythm of the story and that resonate with each other. We want images in which the overall effect becomes much more than just the sum of the parts.

When working with projects, it is a good idea to consult with other people to see what they see. Even if personal photography remains personal, when it comes to editing a group of photographs that are to be displayed together as a coherent body of work, this exercise can cast an additional light that can help us realize even better what we wanted to say with our photographs.

During our Creative Retreats, Rafael Rojas will help you edit the final selection of images made during the Creative Retreat, in order to compose a body of work where every image resonates with each other.

Finally, once printed, you will learn how to bind the prints and make your own artist book, the culmination of the whole photographic process and the reflection of your personal vision of the place we have photographed during the week.

During our Creative Retreat, we will teach you how to:

• Identify your personal vision finding patterns in your work

• Identify the intent encapsulated into your images

• Find consistency and coherence in your work

• Learn how to edit your work and make a final selection

• Learn how to make a handmade bound portfolio with your prints

All private. Coronavirus, you shall not pass!

We will provide you with a magical and inspiring private setting. Single Occupancy accommodation in a luxurious “cortijo” rented as a whole just for our group, with swimming pool and a lot of space to work with our computers, while Anca prepares a delicious meal for us. The best plan for these troubled times, as we will be on our own for the whole week.

Cover the whole photographic process

We will take you to some of the most intimate, hidden and magical places of the area where to create personal work. You will be taken to authentic locations off the beaten track, where to photograph unhurried. Then, back at the “cortijo”, we will spend time learning how to shape it into expressive images full of intent and meaning.

Go home with a portfolio of your work

Every day, we will print some of our images made the day before. At the end of our Creative Retreat, you will go home with a portfolio of a dozen of your most expressive images made during the retreat, printed and bound by you. Are you tired of making photographs without purpose? This Creative Retreat will rekindle your passion for photography!

THE JEWEL OF EUROPE

Andalusia is a unique region blessed with some of the most varied natural, cultural and historical values of the world and in this workshop we will discover its most authentic, intimate and extraordinary face. 

For this Creative Photo retreat of 7 days, we will be based near Ronda (Málaga province), where we will be lodged in an exclusive “cortijo” fully booked for our group (Andalusian white-washed traditional farm, fully renovated into luxurious rural hotel full of charm).  

From here, we will visit incredibly different natural landscapes ranging from never-ending mossy wet forests to barren colourful deserts. Andalusia means diversity, and you will have the chance of exploring and photographing not only the natural landscape, but also some of the most delightful rural landscapes of the whole Europe: rolling hills dressed in reds, greens and blues, oceans of centennial olive trees, isolated oak trees in fields of wheat, an explosion of spring flowers ...

The cherry on the cake will be the extraordinary Andalusian white villages, improbably perched atop a hill and surrounded by mountains, with a past as rich as their visual appeal and that offer to the photographer incredible possibilities of playing with tone, shape, texture and light and shadow.   
 

HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS TRIP

Andalusia is authentic, genuine, true and unspoiled, combining striking natural scenery with some of the most beautiful and history loaded villages in the World.

The places we will vi­sit are all about diversity. Wet forest, true desert, rocky mountains, rolling hills, olive trees, colourful farmlands, perched villages atop improbable hills, the ocean...This will be like experien­cing several trips in one!

Rafael was born in Spain from Andalusian parents and knows this part of the world like the palm of his hand. You will get to places that not many people know, enjoy superb lodging and food and live a truly genuine Andalusian experience.