Classes
Fall 2024 Photography Classes
Our live, interactive, and instructor-led photography classes take place online in small groups generally limited to 6 to 8 students. We give each other feedback in real time, with students participating live from around the world.
We offer classes that specialize in storytelling, long-term projects, documentary and street photography, environmental portraits, making photobooks/zines, composition, still life, multimedia, and technical courses in Lightroom, InDesign, Premiere Pro and more.
ONLINE COURSE
New Visions for New Landscapes
In landscape photography we encounter our relationship to the earth, our concepts of nature, and our own position to it. As photographers, as our awareness of our changing ecology grows, so, too, does our way of encountering and portraying our surroundings. In this course, students will develop an individual project that documents their immediate environs with an eye toward uncovering the many aspects of our changing landscapes — whether that’s a vast natural area or dense urban space, or one’s own backyard or neighborhood. You’ll develop instruments of exploration and discovery and look for your own, personal ways to take pictures of our ever-changing landscape.
For inspiration, we’ll look at the work of the “new topographics” photographers — including Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, and Bernd and Hilla Becher — and their groundbreaking 1970s exhibition “Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape,” as well as work by Edward Burtynsky, Sally Mann, and photographers from the 19th and early 20th centuries. This class will meet every other week to allow time for students to work on their projects.
This is a new class, so it’s everyone — whether they’ve taken Stefan’s earlier landscape classes or not.
Stefan Frank is a photographer and writer, working from Heidelberg, Germany. Way before he came to photography, he studied mathematics and philosophy at Ruhr Universität Bochum and worked as an IT specialist. He studied at Atelier Smedsby with JH Engström and Margot Wallard in Paris in 2017, before he eventually began studying photography at Ostkreuzschule, Berlin, with Peter Bialobrzeski. He graduated in 2023 with the work Irgendwo (“Anywhere”), a project dealing with politically motivated crime and the terror-spree of the far right in Germany. He has been teaching with StrudelmediaLive since 2020, giving courses on surrealism, poetics of space, gestalt theory for photographers, and more. His work has been exhibited in Heidelberg, Frankfurt, and Berlin.
Stefan teaches the poetics of space, nighttime photography, and much more — including presenting The Photobook Show — for StrudelmediaLive.
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ONLINE COURSE
Photography with Mixed Media: Developing a Personal Visual Style
When you want to go beyond seeing your images on a digital display or two-dimensional print, consider adding mixed media, where every choice you make in materials, techniques, composition, and color plays a role in the originality and authenticity of your work. Using a variety of creative methods with simple tools — cutting, glueing, embroidery, photo transfer on fabric, letter embroidery, and more — you’ll define and develop your own visual language using mixed media as a tool. This class is open to photographers who have experience with mixed media or are beginners, and is all about experimenting with materials, challenging yourself with new techniques and compositions, and using the power of a good story to create an intimate, unique, and personal mixed media style. You’ll develop your skills through weekly assignments and we’ll analyze together the work of various artists to learn from their choices. A personal style is all about accepting what your hands and mind create.
Jolanda Drukker Murray is a contemporary sculptor and textile artist based in Utrecht (The Netherlands). She studied art history at Leiden University and attended a program at Artibus Art School Utrecht with a focus on ceramics and bronze. She began collecting fabrics and creating wall hangings which were exhibited in several shows. She also created a “Circle of Life in 10 Kimonos” for the Kröller-Müller Museum. Jolanda specializes in “documentary embroidery”: telling stories using embroidery as well as mixed media techniques on photos and pictures from magazines. Her latest textile installation Stonehenge is a combination of photo embroidery, embroidery. and stitch work. She is currently working on Dialogue between Photography and Embroidery, an artbook in which she is embroidering on photos by the Dutch photographer Milja Markies.
Jolanda teaches embroidery and mixed media techniques for StrudelmediaLive.
ONLINE COURSE
Pen and Pictures: Creative Writing for Photographers
Are you already using your own writing to accompany your photography — or maybe want to start writing but don’t know how to begin? This generative creative writing course — in which you’ll both write during class and have optional writing invitations after class — is designed for photographers. Through the use of play and associative techniques, we’ll draft poems, fiction, and fragments from life; explore seven modes of imagery; and learn ways to free the imagination. Each session will include lecture, discussion, writing exercises, and sharing time. Assignment topics include the artistic process, tools and techniques of photography; speculation by way of writing beyond what cameras can capture; recollection and Proust’s concept of “creative wrong memory”; temporal and spatial description; and the self-portrait, whether realist or abstract, with or without the human figure. By the end of class, you’ll have numerous pages of imaginative writing that can work as standalone pieces or be incorporated into your own photography.
Janée J. Baugher, MFA, is the author of the craft book, The Ekphrastic Writer: Creating Art-Influenced Poetry, Fiction and Nonfiction, as well as two full-length poetry collections. She’s an assistant editor at Boulevard magazine, has been a featured poet on Seattle Channel TV and at the Library of Congress, and was awarded a 2024–2025 CityArtist grant by the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture. For her third poetry collection, she won Tupelo Press’s Dorset Prize for The Andrew Wyeth Chronicles (coming in 2026).
Janée teaches creative writing for StrudelmediaLive.
IN-PERSON/ONLINE HYBRID CLASS
In Person: Photographing the Poetry of New York City
Dates: Saturdays, Sept 28–Nov 9, 2024
Time: 11am–1pm (ET)
Sessions: 5 (This class has 5 sessions and meets in person in New York City on Sept 28, Oct 26, and Nov 2 and online on Oct 5 and Nov 9.)
Limited enrollment: 10 students
Fee: $405
Street photography is one of the most popular genres for photographers, yet it’s difficult to create an image that hits all the right notes — engaging and dynamic composition, strong subject matter, and a unique point of view. This hybrid in-person/online class is ideal for students who want to meet and photograph with others while learning how to capture those compelling moments: urban street scenes, street portraits, and the poetry of everyday life. We’ll meet in person at different New York City locations to photograph the vibrant street life of Manhattan’s Chinatown; Brooklyn’s Prospect Park with its infinite possibilities of photographing people and urban landscapes; and the industrial neighborhood of Sunset Park including Industry City. You’ll challenge yourself to find new ways to take pictures in an area you may be familiar with, and to find what’s interesting about locations new to you. Throughout, we’ll explore the work of photographers with an emphasis on street portraits (Vivian Maier, Meryl Meisler, Baldwin Lee, and Helen Levitt among others) and discuss the use of exposure, shutter speed, F-stop composition, available light, and explore the different ways we can apply these techniques to our practice.
Josefina Fernandez Moran
Josefina Fernandez Moran is a photographer from Buenos Aires, Argentina, living in Brooklyn. She taught visual storytelling in conjunction with the Museum of the
Moving Image in New York City as part of the SU-CASA grant program. She taught photography in her native Buenos Aires, and worked with photographer Harvey Stein teaching workshops in Argentina during the celebration of Carnaval.
Her series “Adolescent Girls” was exhibited at The Clemente on New York City’s Lower East Side in 2022. Her work has been exhibited in several group and solo exhibitions, including at the Consulate of Argentina (New York, 2021), The Latin American Fine Art Competition at Agora Gallery (New York, 2018), and Umbrella Arts (New York, 2016 and 2018). Additionally, she was among the selected winners of The Photo Review in 2019 and 2020, and is a recipient of the En Foco Fellowship (2020).
Josefina teaches in-person street photography for StrudelmediaLive.
Street photography is one of the most popular genres for photographers, yet it’s difficult to create an image that hits all the right notes — engaging and dynamic composition, strong subject matter, and a unique point of view. This hybrid in-person/online class is ideal for students who want to meet and photograph with others while learning how to capture those compelling moments: urban street scenes, street portraits, and the poetry of everyday life. We’ll meet in person at different New York City locations to photograph the vibrant street life of Manhattan’s Chinatown; Brooklyn’s Prospect Park with its infinite possibilities of photographing people and urban landscapes; and the industrial neighborhood of Sunset Park including Industry City. You’ll challenge yourself to find new ways to take pictures in an area you may be familiar with, and to find what’s interesting about locations new to you. Throughout, we’ll explore the work of photographers with an emphasis on street portraits (Vivian Maier, Meryl Meisler, Baldwin Lee, and Helen Levitt among others) and discuss the use of exposure, shutter speed, F-stop composition, available light, and explore the different ways we can apply these techniques to our practice.
Josefina Fernandez Moran is a photographer from Buenos Aires, Argentina, living in Brooklyn. She taught visual storytelling in conjunction with the Museum of the
Moving Image in New York City as part of the SU-CASA grant program. She taught photography in her native Buenos Aires, and worked with photographer Harvey Stein teaching workshops in Argentina during the celebration of Carnaval.
Her series “Adolescent Girls” was exhibited at The Clemente on New York City’s Lower East Side in 2022. Her work has been exhibited in several group and solo exhibitions, including at the Consulate of Argentina (New York, 2021), The Latin American Fine Art Competition at Agora Gallery (New York, 2018), and Umbrella Arts (New York, 2016 and 2018). Additionally, she was among the selected winners of The Photo Review in 2019 and 2020, and is a recipient of the En Foco Fellowship (2020).
ONLINE COURSE
Diving Deep: A Monthly Mentoring Group
This intimate mentoring group meets once per month and is for photographers and media artists who are looking for long-term support and continuity while working on a project. We’ll look at different approaches to storytelling and what to consider when working on a long-term project — from story structure, composition, editing, research, to different documentary and conceptual approaches. Each student receives individual feedback, and we’ll also discuss how to best present each student’s final project: on the web, in book form, an exhibition, or as a multimedia piece. A guest speaker (to be announced) will present their work and share their experience. This class is limited to 6 students only and each session runs for 3 hours with a 10 minute break. Includes a private 1-on-1 session.
Anja Hitzenberger is a photographer, filmmaker, consultant, and educator. She is the founder of StrudelmediaLive, an educational platform that offers live online photography classes and more to people around the world. Anja studied in the Creative Practice full-time program at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York City, and has been on the faculty there since 2009. She is dedicated to working with people from different cultures across the globe.
Her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows, film festivals, and on theater stages throughout Europe, the United States, South America, and Asia. Her photography has been published internationally and is a part of both private and institutional collections, including the International Center of Photography. She has received numerous artistic grants and has been awarded residencies in Rome, Paris, Warsaw, Beijing, and Tainan (Taiwan). A focus of her activities has been working with live performance, including producing a multimedia piece that toured in New York City, Austria, and Korea.
Anja has been teaching live online photography classes since 2015, as well as in-person workshops in New York, Europe, China, and Taiwan. Originally from Salzburg, Austria, she divides her time between New York and Vienna.
Mini-Workshop
Techniques to Process Your RAW Photos to Black and White
In this mini-workshop you will learn effective techniques to address the many challenges when processing your RAW captures to black and white. To achieve the right balance of contrast, texture, and detail without the color information to differentiate the elements in the scene, careful adjustments are needed to create a beautiful image that does not appear too flat or too harsh. Black and white enthusiast Kai McBride will process several photographs during the workshop and show how to take advantage of the software tools and how to develop a consistent workflow to give the best results.
Kai McBride is a photographer, musician, teacher, and avid cyclist who recently uprooted from Brooklyn to sunny Santa Fe, New Mexico. He spent the last ten years teaching photography and managing the photo facilities at Columbia University, his alma mater, where he received an MFA in 2008.
Born on the island of Kauai in 1972, by his 18th birthday Kai had lived in California, Oregon, Mississippi, Wisconsin, Texas, Oahu, North Carolina, and Massachusetts. He sharpened his powers of observation while adjusting to life between suburban ranch-style homes, cabins with no running water, and a 20-foot teepee in the field of a commune.
His photographs have been exhibited in museum and gallery exhibitions, and are held in public and private collections. His first monograph, About Face: Picturing Tampa, was published by SPQR Editions in Fall 2016.
Kai teaches black and white photography, photobooks, and more for StrudelmediaLive.
ONLINE COURSE
Photography as a Pilgrimage
In this course, you’ll examine the role of walking as a personal practice and a means for generating photographic artwork. With the idea of remaining close to home, this class aims to investigate our relationship to our neighborhoods and community. How can walking be a process of care and connection? How does photography allow for an opportunity to traverse landscapes, both real and imagined? Alongside various creative exercises, prompts, lectures, and critiques, you’ll engage with numerous readings on walking as a historical and cultural practice — including Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust, Matthew Beaumont’s The Walker, and Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Partly theoretical, partly poetic, this class is above all an opportunity to connect with your camera and photographic methods in new ways.
Kat Shannon is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, and educator working in photography, text, and video, currently based between São Paulo, Brazil, and Orlando, Florida. Her work examines notions of intimacy, human connection, gender, community, and culture. She holds degrees in photography from Savannah College of Art and Design (BFA) as well as Bard College (MFA).
Kat has held teaching positions at Yeshiva University, Brookdale College, Stetson University, Middlesex College, and ICP, and previously worked for three years as the head curator at an art consultancy in New York. In 2017 Kat co-founded the collaborative artist collective Memory Foam through which she curates exhibitions, publishes and collects artists' books and zines, and produces an artist interview series called “Artists Eat Ice Cream.”
Kat teaches Ways of Seeing, Photography as Pilgrimage, and other personal vision classes for StrudelmediaLive.
ONLINE COURSE
A Comprehensive Lightroom Classic Course
If you want to take your pictures to the next level, establishing a good post-production workflow is essential. In this comprehensive Adobe Lightroom Classic course — for both beginners and people with some experience who want to go deeper — you’ll gain a strong foundation in all the main tools you need to help your images reach their full potential. We’ll explore all of the modules, from importing and organizing your digital archive in the Library module, to sharing your images through physical prints, the web, books, or slideshows. A main focus will be the Develop module — highlighting all the tools at your disposal, from basic image correction, to detail masking techniques, to establishing a color workflow. Class sessions will include assignment critique and open lab time, and you’ll gain important real-world experience by watching Nestor make live adjustments to student photographs during class. By the end of this course, students will be skilled in using Lightroom Classic to make their photographs really shine.
Néstor Pérez-Molière was born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and currently resides in The Bronx. His practice takes place mainly in the realm of photography, but also incorporates performance, drawing, video, installation, and intaglio techniques. All of these are used in unison as he turns his camera on himself and delves into self-portraiture, exploring his relationship with his body, body image ideals, and food relationships as subject matter.
Nestor has an MFA from Hunter College and holds a BSc in botany. He was part of the Artist in the Marketplace and Creative Capital’s Taller mentorship programs, and was part of The Bronx Museum of the Art’s Fourth Biennial. He has exhibited at the Museo de las Américas, the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center, Longwood Gallery, and the Liga de Artes de San Juan. He currently teaches digital and darkroom photography at the International Center of Photography and The Point CDC.
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ONLINE COURSE
Photo Exhibitions That Made History: What Can We Learn from Them?
The experience of viewing photographs in a deliberately designed exhibition space is fundamentally different than seeing the images on a digital display or the printed page. In the history of photography, there are certain significant photo exhibitions that you encounter again and again. What made these exhibitions in particular stand out and retain their relevance today?
This course is for people who want to develop a deeper understand of how the presentation of images in a physical space can — or has, historically — created new narratives and perspectives. We will look at historical group photography exhibitions and consider questions such as: what types of images were exhibited? how were the photographs displayed? who were the photographers? who were the organizers? why are these exhibitions still remembered today?
Participants will visit an exhibition on their own during the course, document it photographically, and make a presentation to the group. Through lecture, discussion, and mutual analytical exercises, we will learn how individual 20th-century photography shows — ranging from New York to Johannesburg to Tokyo — became landmark exhibitions and how they can inform our storytelling today.
Dortje Fink is an art and photography historian, educator, cultural organizer and podcaster based in Berlin. With academic training at Humboldt University in Berlin and Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, her research interests involve photographic archives, exhibition histories, lens-based media art, visual culture, biases of canonization, and decentering the history of photography. Her deep engagement with works of Carrie Mae Weems, Philip Kwame Apagya, Boris Mikhailov, Martin Chambi, Nickolas Muray, and Manfred Paul has inspired her writing, which has been published in exhibition catalogues and magazines. Since 2014, she has been working with C/O Berlin — an exhibition space dedicated to photography and visual media. She hosts, along with Julia Wolf, the German podcast “rein theoretisch – Fotografisches mit Fink&Wolf” about photographs whose visibility is restricted for a variety of reasons.
Dortje teaches the history of photography for StrudelmediaLive.
ONLINE COURSE
Exploring Physical and Digital Photo Collage
Dive into the art of photo collage in this hands-on class and expand your storytelling and creativity! This course is both an overview of photo collage as well as an exercise- and project-based experience, and is for photographers who have either worked with collage before or not. We’ll begin with an in-depth survey of contemporary photographers (including Zuzana herself) and how they are working with different types of collage in their artistic practice. From there, we’ll move into the very sensual act of cutting and manipulating physical prints and more to create 2D and 3D collage and assemblages, and end with an introduction to digital collage basics with Photoshop. Assignments will focus on exercises with specific techniques as well as developing a project that you’ll work on to be presented in the final session. Students can work with their own or found photographs and images.
Zuzana Pustaiová's interest in visual arts began with painting but soon switched to photography, which she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava (Slovakia) where she completed her Ph.D in 2022. Her artwork uses role-playing as a principal tool to explore and reveal the relationships between family members, relatives, friends, and other social groups. With a sense of wit, humor and irony, she uncovers the cultural stereotypes related to gender, age, tradition, and social inclusion. In 2022, her book One Day Every Day was shortlisted for the Paris Photo – Aperture Photobook Award. She has received numerous awards in contemporary photography — including the Grand Prix at the Rovinj Photodays 2021 and Finalist for the 2017 Lucie Foundation Scholarship in Los Angeles. In 2018 she was named Slovak Photographer of the Year. She has exhibited internationally in Europe and Canada and lives and works in Levice and Bratislava.
Zuzana teaches new approaches to photographing family stories and self-portraiture for StrudelmediaLive.
ONLINE COURSE
Seeing in Black and White for Digital Photographers
Have you experimented with shooting in black and white but were not quite happy with the results? Do you love the depiction of the world in black and white photographs and want to harness that abstracted quality in your own work? In this class, students will learn to make monochromatic photographs of depth and clarity that rival the masterpieces produced in a darkroom. We go beyond thinking of black and white as a digital filter, and explore how an image’s tonal range, balance, and contrast, affects the mood, emotion, and meaning of the picture. Additionally, students are exposed to the powerful tools available in Adobe Lightroom Classic to make purposeful conversions to black and white—superior to the flat desaturated images that are produced by default. Through weekly tutorials, assignments, shooting exercises, lectures, and instructor feedback, students will improve their visualization skills and gain confidence in a black and white digital workflow.
Kai McBride is a photographer, musician, teacher, and avid cyclist who recently uprooted from Brooklyn to sunny Santa Fe, New Mexico. He spent the last ten years teaching photography and managing the photo facilities at Columbia University, his alma mater, where he received an MFA in 2008.
Born on the island of Kauai in 1972, by his 18th birthday Kai had lived in California, Oregon, Mississippi, Wisconsin, Texas, Oahu, North Carolina, and Massachusetts. He sharpened his powers of observation while adjusting to life between suburban ranch-style homes, cabins with no running water, and a 20-foot teepee in the field of a commune.
His photographs have been exhibited in museum and gallery exhibitions, and are held in public and private collections. His first monograph, About Face: Picturing Tampa, was published by SPQR Editions in Fall 2016.
Kai teaches black and white photography, photobooks, and more for StrudelmediaLive.
Mini-Workshop
The Artists’s Sketchbook: Ideas and Tools for the Practicing Photographer
Artists and photographers often use a sketchbook to hold on to fleeting thoughts and preliminary results — whether to jot down ideas, organize work, or just print some pictures to document their development over time. In this mini-workshop, we’ll look at examples of how photographers and artists like Francesca Woodman, Gerhard Richter, Frank Ockenfels, and Chris Ashworth have used the sketchbook — and how you can expand your artistic practice using this powerful tool. While we’ll focus mostly on analog tools and practices, we’ll also look briefly at how you can use digital sketchbooks like Milanote and Miro to organize your research and collaborate with others.
Stefan Frank is a photographer and writer, working from Heidelberg, Germany. Way before he came to photography, he studied mathematics and philosophy at Ruhr Universität Bochum and worked as an IT specialist. He studied at Atelier Smedsby with JH Engström and Margot Wallard in Paris in 2017, before he eventually began studying photography at Ostkreuzschule, Berlin, with Peter Bialobrzeski. He graduated in 2023 with the work Irgendwo (“Anywhere”), a project dealing with politically motivated crime and the terror-spree of the far right in Germany. He has been teaching with StrudelmediaLive since 2020, giving courses on surrealism, poetics of space, gestalt theory for photographers, and more. His work has been exhibited in Heidelberg, Frankfurt, and Berlin.
Stefan teaches the poetics of space, nighttime photography, and much more — including presenting The Photobook Show — for StrudelmediaLive.
ONLINE COURSE
Creative Visual Storytelling: An Exploration
Would you like to bring your photography to the next level by telling richer stories with your images? In this class we’ll explore techniques for developing a strong narrative and building sequenced stories, and how adding non-photography elements can enrich the overall message. We’ll look at work by other photographers — from documentary to more conceptual approaches — to analyze story structure and we’ll examine the methods and tools they use for creative storytelling, including adding text, drawings, archival and found photos, and more. Examples will be presented on how a story can be told in different ways on different platforms (web-based, books, mail art, and installation). Through weekly critique, exercises, and discussion, you’ll deepen your photography practice and develop your own visual voice.
Anja Hitzenberger is a photographer, filmmaker, consultant, and educator. She is the founder of StrudelmediaLive, an educational platform that offers live online photography classes and more to people around the world. Anja studied in the Creative Practice full-time program at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York City, and has been on the faculty there since 2009. She is dedicated to working with people from different cultures across the globe.
Her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows, film festivals, and on theater stages throughout Europe, the United States, South America, and Asia. Her photography has been published internationally and is a part of both private and institutional collections, including the International Center of Photography. She has received numerous artistic grants and has been awarded residencies in Rome, Paris, Warsaw, Beijing, and Tainan (Taiwan). A focus of her activities has been working with live performance, including producing a multimedia piece that toured in New York City, Austria, and Korea.
Anja has been teaching live online photography classes since 2015, as well as in-person workshops in New York, Europe, China, and Taiwan. Originally from Salzburg, Austria, she divides her time between New York and Vienna.
Mini-Workshop
Making Your Own Photobook or Zine: An Overview
Photobooks and zines are a great way to get your work out to people and off of digital screens, but getting started can be daunting. Through an overview of process, styles, methods, considerations, materials, and technical aspects, this one-hour mini-workshop aims to inspire you to create! We’ll touch on ideas about process, from first conception to holding a printed object in your hands; different styles of sequencing and editing your images; working with a designer or not; professional printing vs. handmade books; financial considerations; self-publishing or finding a publisher; determining the most appropriate format for your project; and different approaches to design. Lots of examples will be shown, and there will be time for a Q and A at the end.
Edward Ratliff is a multi-disciplinary artist and educator. In the visual realm, he’s a graphic designer who works in print and digital media with clients ranging from individual artists to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His film, video, and installation work has been exhibited internationally.
As a composer and multi-instrumentalist, he’s led bands in clubs, theaters, and festivals across New York City and in Europe and Asia, and has received numerous commissions and grants for dance and theater scores. His music has been heard in shows on Netflix, HBO, Nickelodeon, Hulu, PBS, and more — everything from a biography of Dostoyevsky to Real Sex Xtra. He “is best known for making richly cinematic music that captures New York City’s momentum and diversity” (The Wall Street Journal) and has been called “a wonderfully spunky and imperturbable trumpet player” (The New York Times).
ONLINE COURSE
“The Optical Unconscious”: Adventures in Surrealist Photography
To the American art critic Rosalind Krauss, Surrealism has played a pivotal role in the development of art in the past 100 years. And in her landmark work, The Optical Unconscious, she developed the idea that photography has played a central role in Surrealism — for her, photography is the most surreal of the arts.
In five chapters (“Formlessness,” “Base Materialism,” “Horizontality,” “Pulse,” and “Entropy”), we follow her ideas and look at how photographers have picked up on ideas of the Surrealists and developed them even further. We’ll look at, among others, work by Lucas Blalock, Duane Michals, Sarah Moon, Aaron Siskind — and in five assignments we’ll use their work and ideas as an inspiration and starting point for our own photography.
This is a new class, so it’s for everyone — whether you’ve taken Stefan’s earlier Surrealism classes or not.
Stefan Frank is a photographer and writer, working from Heidelberg, Germany. Way before he came to photography, he studied mathematics and philosophy at Ruhr Universität Bochum and worked as an IT specialist. He studied at Atelier Smedsby with JH Engström and Margot Wallard in Paris in 2017, before he eventually began studying photography at Ostkreuzschule, Berlin, with Peter Bialobrzeski. He graduated in 2023 with the work Irgendwo (“Anywhere”), a project dealing with politically motivated crime and the terror-spree of the far right in Germany. He has been teaching with StrudelmediaLive since 2020, giving courses on surrealism, poetics of space, gestalt theory for photographers, and more. His work has been exhibited in Heidelberg, Frankfurt, and Berlin.
Stefan teaches the poetics of space, nighttime photography, and much more — including presenting The Photobook Show — for StrudelmediaLive.
ONLINE COURSE
Let Movies Inspire Your Photography, Part 2
Examining the work of filmmakers can be eye-opening for photographers — and this continuation of our popular class on the movies is for all photographers, whether you took Part 1 or not. Through a visual study of a wide range of movies, students will improve their compositional skills and deepen their work. We’ll view and analyze film clips from movies throughout history and from around the world — from France and Italy, to 60s American Noir, Hong Kong action, contemporary films, old black and white, and more. Our group discussion will cover different visual styles and approaches, directors, cinematographers, editing, and story-telling modes. Through weekly assignments students will learn to see cinematically in a way that can enrich their work, whether they are shooting stills or video.
Anja Hitzenberger is a photographer, filmmaker, consultant, and educator. She is the founder of StrudelmediaLive, an educational platform that offers live online photography classes and more to people around the world. Anja studied in the Creative Practice full-time program at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York City, and has been on the faculty there since 2009. She is dedicated to working with people from different cultures across the globe.
Her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows, film festivals, and on theater stages throughout Europe, the United States, South America, and Asia. Her photography has been published internationally and is a part of both private and institutional collections, including the International Center of Photography. She has received numerous artistic grants and has been awarded residencies in Rome, Paris, Warsaw, Beijing, and Tainan (Taiwan). A focus of her activities has been working with live performance, including producing a multimedia piece that toured in New York City, Austria, and Korea.
Anja has been teaching live online photography classes since 2015, as well as in-person workshops in New York, Europe, China, and Taiwan. Originally from Salzburg, Austria, she divides her time between New York and Vienna.
Edward Ratliff is a multi-disciplinary artist and educator. In the visual realm, he’s a graphic designer who works in print and digital media with clients ranging from individual artists to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His film, video, and installation work has been exhibited internationally.
As a composer and multi-instrumentalist, he’s led bands in clubs, theaters, and festivals across New York City and in Europe and Asia, and has received numerous commissions and grants for dance and theater scores. His music has been heard in shows on Netflix, HBO, Nickelodeon, Hulu, PBS, and more — everything from a biography of Dostoyevsky to Real Sex Xtra. He “is best known for making richly cinematic music that captures New York City’s momentum and diversity” (The Wall Street Journal) and has been called “a wonderfully spunky and imperturbable trumpet player” (The New York Times).
ONLINE COURSE
Create Your Own Zine or Photobook with InDesign
Adobe’s InDesign is the most flexible and powerful application to design and layout a photobook or zine. This 6-session class is for students who are new to InDesign and also those who’d like a refresher to work on a project. We’ll discuss developing a visual concept to fit your specific story, and cover step-by-step instructions on workflow, how to best plan and setup a project, how to use the most important InDesign tools, and how to prepare, import, and resize photos.
We’ll discuss working with text, fonts, and typography, and you’ll learn to speak the language of printers and designers. You’ll also get recommendations for where to print your particular project. We’ll look at a variety of zines and photobooks for design inspiration and discuss different design ideas. Students will work on their projects throughout the course, so that by the end (depending on the scope of the project), you’ll have a layout ready to print. This class is limited to only 6 students to give individual attention to each person’s project. We’ll meet as a group for 5 sessions every other week, followed by a private 1-on-1 session to work together on your specific book or zine.
Edward Ratliff is a multi-disciplinary artist and educator. In the visual realm, he’s a graphic designer who works in print and digital media with clients ranging from individual artists to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His film, video, and installation work has been exhibited internationally.
As a composer and multi-instrumentalist, he’s led bands in clubs, theaters, and festivals across New York City and in Europe and Asia, and has received numerous commissions and grants for dance and theater scores. His music has been heard in shows on Netflix, HBO, Nickelodeon, Hulu, PBS, and more — everything from a biography of Dostoyevsky to Real Sex Xtra. He “is best known for making richly cinematic music that captures New York City’s momentum and diversity” (The Wall Street Journal) and has been called “a wonderfully spunky and imperturbable trumpet player” (The New York Times).
Previous Classes
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A Better Tool for Black and White? Meet Silver Efex Pro
A Photographer’s Guide to the Expressive Richness of Light
A Photographic Exploration of the Psychogeography of Your City
Adventures in Still Life
AI and Photography, Part 1: Beginnings
AI and Photography, Part 2: Practical Applications
AI and Photography, Part 3: Implications and What Lies Ahead
An Interior View
Architecture and Narrative: A Sense of Place
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Assignment Workflow from a Pro: Plan, Shoot, Deliver — Repeat!
Assignment: Monochrome! Analysis, Technique, and Exercises in B&W
Beyond Documentation: New Approaches to Exploring Family Stories
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Bi‑Weekly Feedback Group for Your Photo Project
Black and White Photography Refined
Bringing Depth to Your Longterm Project
Cameraless Photography: Creating Magic with Alternative Processes
Capturing the Beauty and Feeling of Interior Spaces
Collaboration as an Ethical Documentary Practice
Congratulations, You’ve Finished Your Photography Project! Now What?
Create Your Own Zine or Photobook with InDesign
Create Your Own Zine or Photobook with InDesign
Creating a Video Diary: Intro to Multimedia Storytelling
Creating Environmental Portraits That Tell Powerful Stories
Creating Multimedia Portraits: Building Memories
Creative Visual Storytelling: An Exploration
Curious About Analog and Shooting Film?
Delicious Photography
Diptychs, Triptychs, and Panoramics: The Dynamics of Multiples
Discovering the Poetry in Nighttime Photography
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Diving Deep: A Monthly Mentoring Group: Fall
Do‑It‑Yourself Lighting at Home
Documentary Photography: Reality as Subject
Documentary Storytelling: Explore New Tools and Ideas
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Dynamic Composition for Visual Storytellers
Editing and Sequencing for Your Website or Portfolio
Enrich Your Photographic Vision: Seeing Through the Eyes of Others
Experimenting in the Visual Laboratory: Let’s Play!
Explore Your Surroundings — Wherever You Are
Fall Photo Shake Up!
Feedback Group: Your Long‑term Project
Finding an Audience and Getting Your Work out into the World
Finding Photos Where You Find Yourself
Finding Your Voice as a Photographer
Flexing Your Camera Controls
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For Writers and Journalists: Improve Your Photography
Function of Memory: Photography in Context
Gestalt Theory for Photographers: Practical Application of the Principles of Visual Perception
How to Archive, Organize, and Care for Your Digital and Analog Photographs
How to Build a Still Life: A Series of Experiments
How to Light Environmental Portraits
Image and Text: Extending Your Message
In‑Person Weekend Workshop NYC: Explore Broadway, NYC’s Longest Street
In‑Person Weekend Workshop NYC: Queens along the 7 Train
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In‑Person Weekend Workshop: Photographing New York City Islands
InDesign for Photobooks and Zines
InDesign Project Group: Develop Your Photobook or Zine
InDesign: Beyond the Basics for Photobooks and Zines
Introduction to Handmade Books
Introduction to Multimedia Storytelling: Combining Stills, Audio, and Video
Learn to Make Short Films with Still Photographs Using Premiere Pro
Learn to Work with Color in Adobe Lightroom Classic’s Develop Module
Let Movies Inspire Your Photography, Part 2
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Let Movies Inspire Your Photography: Part I
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Let Movies Inspire Your Photography: Part I
Lighting Your Still‑Life Using Household Lamps
Looking Inward: Photographing Family
Make a Photobook with One Sheet of Paper
Make Your Own Handmade, Hardcover Photobook
Make Your Own Zine
Mastering Color in Your Images
Mastering Flash Photography
Mastering Lightroom Essentials
Mosaic and Entanglement: Photographic Histories in Europe from 1950–2000
Multimedia Love Letter
Our Ever‑Changing Landscapes
Parks and Pictures: Paths to New Ways of Seeing
Photo Workshop in German: Reportage ‑ Fotografie
Photo Workshop in German: So entstehen dynamische Bilder
Photobook Intensive: Structure and Meaning
Photographing Domestic Life: Pleasure and Chaos
Photographing People, Telling Powerful Stories
Photographing Strangers: Practical Tools and Ethical Questions
Photography and Storytelling: Explore New Tools and Ideas
Photography as a Pilgrimage
Photography Meets Writing: Finding New Ways to Speak about Your Work
Photography’s Relentless Melt: Examining Image and Time
Poems and Pictures: A Shared Vision
Poetics of Space: Explore the Vast Universe of Your Home
Poetics of Space: The Place We Call Home
Questionable Pictures
Recent Histories: A Survey of Photography from 2000–2020
Rediscovering Your Forgotten Frames: Using Your Personal Photo Archive to Create New Work
Reflecting Blue: Cyanotypes on Glass
Seeing Ourselves in the Street: Identifying with the Other
Sending Your Photobook or Zine to Print: An Overview of the Process
Sequencing Techniques for Photographs: Concepts and Workflow
Still Life and the “Do‑It‑Yourself” Home Studio
Storytelling with Photo Embroidery and Mixed Media
Street Portraits: How to Approach Strangers
