Workshop Sponsor: ThinkTANK Photo

I'm proud to announce a second sponsor for the Close to Home workshop, your favorite camera bag manufacturer and mine, ThinkTANK Photo! Yep, the kind folks at ThinkTANK Photo have provided us with some cool workshop prizes for the Close to Home participants.

I've been using the Retrospective 5 for a few months now and it's quickly become my favorite bag to head out into the world with. It's perfect for a small kit with my camera and a 50mm prime attached, a wide angle and a short telephoto—perfect for almost any situation. Small and lightweight, it lets me worry about the shot and not about a bunch of gear weighing me down.

Since part of our workshop mission is help you concentrate on your photography and less on the gear, we've got prize packages that reflect that "grab your camera and go" philosophy. Three random workshop participants will win one of these great prizes:

• A ThinkTANK  Photo Retrospective 5 camera bag in Pinestone, along with a Pixel Pocket Rocketand a Cable Management 10 accessory organizer. (Yep, all three!)
• A ThinkTANK Photo Retrospective 5 camera bag in Pinestone
• A ThinkTANK Photo Pixel Pocket Rocket and a Cable Management 10 accessory organizer

Of course, if you really do need to carry a lot of gear, ThinkTANK Photo also makes many other bags and accessories to help you—shoulder bags, backpacks and rolling bags, to name a few. Many pros swear by ThinkTANK Photo gear.

My thanks to ThinkTANK Photo's for their sponsorship, and to Craft & Vision for theirs. It's great folks like these that make workshops like this possible. I'm grateful for their support.

Hope to see you in Port Townsend next month!

Workshop Sponsor: Craft & Vision

I'm pleased to announce that the Close to Home Workshop has its first sponsor and it's a great one. Craft & Vision, publishers of the original ebook, Close to Home: Finding Great Photographs in Your Own Back Yard has kindly agreed to give each workshop participant a free copy of the ebook or, if you already own it, one free ebook of your choice from their online store.

If you've seen the selection there, you know what terrific resources these ebooks are. If not, you're missing a great library of valuable photographic knowledge—and for only $5 each. You can choose books from respected professional photographers such as Dave Delnea, Andrew S. Gibson, Nicole S. Young, Darwin Wiggett, and, of course, David duChemin. There are books on the art, the techniques, and the business of photography, and there's usually a new one every month. They are truly a great resource for photographers of all levels.

Oh, one more thing… on the last day of the workshop, Ray and I will randomly select one workshop participant to receive a full set of all of the Craft & Vision ebooks! Yep, every single book (PDF) published by Craft & Vision to date will be yours to read at your leisure.

UPDATE: David duChemin has upped the ante for the Craft & Vision prizes by adding a signed set of all three of his currently published print books, Within the Frame: The Journey of Photographic Vision, Visionmongers: Making a Life and a Living in Photography, and Vision & Voice: Refining Your Vision in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. We'll give this terrific prize away to one lucky workshop participant!

Our sincere thanks to Craft & Vision for their support and for providing these great prizes to our workshop participants. (What? You haven't signed up yet? What are you waiting for?)

Announcing the first Close to Home Photography Workshop

It's hard to believe, but it's been nearly a year since my ebook, Close to Home: Finding Great Photographs in Your Own Back Yard was published by Craft & Vision, I've been amazed by the response I've gotten from readers all over the world. Many of you have taken its message to heart and looked deeper into the places where you live to make some pretty cool photographs. (Check out the Close to Home Flickr group for some fantastic photographs made close to these photographers' homes.) I'm sincerely gratified that so many of you have found the book to be useful and inspiring. You have my heartfelt thanks for that. I've also had several folks ask me about how they can learn more about how to find extraordinary photographs in the familiar and seemingly mundane places where we live. Well, I'm happy to announce that now you can. I've partnered with photographer Ray Ketcham in Port Townsend, Washington to present the first Close to Home Photography Workshop, September 29 - October 1, 2011.

Ray is a great photographer and teacher, and spends a lot of time working with his students to get them to slow down and pay attention to their world, and to show others how they feel about it. He is also the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Rear Curtain, a thought-provoking web site about photographic storytelling. I'm thrilled to have Ray join me in his home town.

As many of you know, I visited Port Townsend recently for the Artists' Round Table and I have to say, it's pretty amazing and a great place to kick off what I hope will be a series of these workshops. Port Townsend, or just "PT" as it's known locally, is an enclave of artists, musicians, performers, and writers and you can feel yourself relaxing your pace as soon as you arrive. You'll start to slow down a bit and pay closer attention to your photography and how much it's a part of your life. In this small harbor town, we'll spend two and a half days exploring, working through exercises, and tackling your own individual assignments to help you see more clearly and creatively.

So, if you're interested in joining Ray and me for two and a half days of slowing down and looking deeper into your photographic creativity, then head on over to the Close to Home Workshops web site to find out more and to register for the Port Townsend workshop.

I'd really love to see you there.