2024 Summer Arts Workshops
Registration opens January 22 at 10:00 a.m. PST. We look forward to creating with you in Tahoe!
View the complete Summer Arts Workshops schedule
Photographing the Natural Landscape with James Baker, June 24-28
Lake Tahoe is the perfect setting to refine your photographic skills to interpret the natural landscape. Working with digital cameras, you will capture the varied terrain of this vibrant, colorful region. Strengthen your Photoshop skills and improve your technical abilities while clarifying your vision. This workshop includes several sunrise and sunset field sessions.
About the artist
James (Jim) Baker began photographing at 12, learning to develop film and print in black and white from his father. In 1973, he attended Rhode Island School of Design, where he studied with photographers Aaron Siskind and Harry Callahan and, in 1975, received a Master of Fine Arts degree. For a decade, Baker taught in universities and, in 1986, took a position as Photography Program Director at Anderson Ranch Arts Center near Aspen, Colorado, later becoming the organization's Executive Director. Surrounded by established artists who possessed the clarity and conviction needed to build their careers — Baker deepened his commitment to his own artistic career, creating and exhibiting portfolios of images. He later served as President of Maine College of Art in Portland, Maine, and Executive Director of Pilchuck Glass School near Seattle, Washington.
Baker's interest has focused on the natural landscape for the past fifty years. "Besides spending much time outdoors, I was influenced by many things I read and observed. For instance, the writings of Joseph Conrad, Annie Dillard, and Henry Beston helped me better understand my relationship to nature. Portrayals of landscape as backgrounds in paintings by, among others, Domenico Veneziano, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and Yves Tanguy deeply influenced how I have interpreted the natural world." In pursuit of his interest, he has traveled across North America to often remote natural environments from northern Canada to southern Mexico and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.
Initially using a 4" x 5" field view camera, early in his career, he worked primarily in black and white and has worked in color for the past forty years. Recently, he has switched to a high-resolution digital camera. Today, Baker actively pursues his photography and writing while continuing to support and advise artists' communities.
View James Baker's artist website
Cost: $750 + $50 Material Fee