Buenos Aires Streets and Tango

The Buenos Aires Streets and Tango Workshopoffers an extraordinary chance to discover and photograph one of the most seductive and mesmerizing cities in the world, Buenos Aires. With its cobblestone streets, grand architecture, and Bohemian charm, Buenos Aires has been called the ‘Paris of the South’. It is also a truly South American capitol, a lively city full of flare and passion that moves to the timeless rhythm of the tango. 

The workshop will be taught and led by Peter Turnley, one of the pre-imminent visual communicators and world traveling photographers of our time. Over the course of the last decades, Turnley has spent a great deal of time photographing in city streets and dancehalls across South America. This workshop will give students an unparalleled chance to explore and capture the magic of Buenos Aires. 

Based in the oldest neighborhood of Buenos Aires, San Telmo, photographers will capture a visually spectacular quarter lined with colorful cafes, antique shops and the city’s celebrated milongas (tango halls) where locals and visitors come to study and dance the tango. The central Plaza Dorrego transforms into an open-air tango hall and street musician stage with a welcoming atmosphere that brings Argentines and foreigners from all walks of life together in the spirit of fun and rhythm. San Telmo is a strikingly colorful neighborhood making it an ideal place to embrace and photograph city life in Argentina and a well-situated launching point for exploring other parts of Buenos Aires. 

Each day students will gather in Turnley’s rented loft space in San Telmo where they will gain insight into the traditions of both documentary and street photography, camera technique and mental approaches to visual storytelling. Classes will last 3-4 hours a day including individual photo critique sessions. Students will spend the remainder of each day wandering in and photographing the streets and culture of San Telmo and neighborhoods throughout Buenos Aires. Students will select a particular theme which will be the focus of their final portfolio. Turnley will guide and support each student in selecting a theme and visual focus, however narrow or broad the student chooses. Turnley is a disciple of the great master photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson and will encourage workshop participants to be attentive to the “decisive moments” of every day life. He is passionate about helping students revel in the joys of observing and seeing the life all around us. 

Few places in the world offer such a rich opportunity to see and witness amazing life as in the streets and tango parlors of Buenos Aires. Students will create a final 15-image photo story/portfolio of their work and show it during the final class on the last Saturday of the workshop. Aside from being a great photographer and teacher, Turnley is a master editor and will work individually with students to help them edit their daily work as they look for the threads of commonality in their images to create  a “vision” or a personal style.

Beyond the rich street life of Buenos Aires, the neighborhood of San Telmo and the environs around the workshop’s meeting space, Turnley will also give students an extensive list of neighborhood tango parlors where they can photograph and witness the wonderful scenes of one of the most dramatic and elegant dances in the world. Add all of this to the entrancing atmosphere and vibrant music and this workshop becomes a truly one-of-a-kind experience. 

Students are welcome to explore their interest in learning to dance the tango throughout the week whether it is the focus of their portfolio or not (nightly classes are available for students after class if they wish to venture out and take lessons on their own.) Peter  will offer information on one of the greatest venues for tango lessons, The Mansion Dandi Royal in San Telmo. 

The Buenos Aires workshop will be an unparalleled way for a student to experience the enchanting, light-soaked city of Buenos Aires with a true of master of documentary photography.


Companions
This is an ideal workshop to bring along a spouse, son or daughter or partner. Non-photographic companions may join the group sessions and meals but are not involved in the critique or review sessions. Companion supplement is $150.


Hotels
Workshop meetings will be held at Peter Turnley’s rented loft in San Telmo, a neighborhood full of many charming hotels for all budgets and tastes. 
Peter has chosen a selection of 5 hotels in San Telmo, listed below. These are only suggestions and students may choose to stay in any hotel where they wish; however, it is recommended that they stay in the neighborhood of San Telmo for convenience in getting to Peters’ rented loft each day for class. Hotels rates are very reasonable in Buenos Aires, as are the prices for restaurants, cafes, and other consumer items. 

Bohemia Hotel
Perú 845, San Telmo, Buenos Aires. 

Mansion Dandi Royal
Piedras 922/36, San Telmo, Buenos Aires. 

Telmho Hotel Boutique
1086 Defensa St. San Telmo, Buenos Aires. 

Mariposita
Carlos Calvo 948, San Telmo, Buenos Aires. 

1890 Boutique Hotel
Salta 1074, San Telmo, Buenos Aires. 


Travel
Daily direct flights depart from Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Miami, New York, and Washington D.C. to Buenos Aires. All international flights arrive at Ministro Pistarini (Ezeiza) International Airport, located 35 km from downtown Buenos Aires. A taxi to the city takes approximately 35 minutes. 

Arrival
Plan to arrive on Saturday, January 8th, or at the latest by Sunday morning January 9th. The first workshop session will begin at 2pm on Sunday, January 9th. Flights from the States are often in the evenings, which means that you could fly Friday evening and arrive Saturday morning to give yourself an evening to get acclimated before the workshop begins on Sunday.

Departures
The workshop ends at noon, Saturday, January 15th, with a show of the students’ final 15-image photo stories made during the week. Students are free to leave on Saturday afternoon, which would enable those needing to get back to the States to work on Monday the time to do so. Those wishing to stay in the region longer are free to continue their trip Saturday afternoon. 

Technology
This is a digital workshop, taught and conducted with digital cameras. If you wish to shoot film, you may so do, but we suggest you take it home for processing; to participate in critiques, you will need to use 35mm digital camera. Students should be comfortable downloading their digital images each evening to a folder and have a means for their work to be transported on a flash drive or disc for the daily review with Turnley. At the start of the workshop students will be encouraged to choose if they want to see their work in color or in black and white and they will be encouraged to stick to this choice throughout the workshop.

What to Bring
Besides your SLR digital camera equipment, bring a body of your creative work with you to share—a portfolio or CD of images. Your portfolio can be prints or digital images. The workshop will have an LCD projector and there will be a final show of all of the students’ work during the final session. 

Camera Gear
A digital SLR camera is required. Students may work with a high-end point and shoot camera such as a Canon G10. Two bodies are recommended with a minimum of at least one wide-angle lens such as a 17-35mm zoom, or 24mm, 28mm, 35mm, or 50mm lens. In order to shoot comfortably in low light situations, it will be preferable that students have a wide-angle lens that is relatively fast and has a wide aperture such as 1.4, 1.8, 2, or 2.8. Bring several memory cards (at least 1 gigabyte cards are recommended), extra batteries and necessary battery chargers. Your laptop should have image management software, such as Apple’s Aperture, Adobe’s Light Room or, as Peter suggests, PhotoMechanic, which can be downloaded, free, on a trial basis from Camerabits.com

Make sure you have a back-up system on which to download each day’s work. This can be your laptop, a portable external hard drive storage device, flash drive, or DVDs. You will need a means of getting your edited images into a folder each day for Peter’s review—flash drives are the most practical, but you can also use an external hard drive or DVD.

Research and Preparation
Research and preparation are important parts of any adventure. There are many thorough guidebooks for Buenos Aires and extensive information about Buenos Aires can be found on the Internet. 

Meals
The first and last meals are included in the cost of the workshop. You will be a guest of the workshop for a group opening dinner on Sunday night and at the final dinner Friday night. Aside from the two group meals, breakfasts, lunches and dinners are independent although students are encouraged to join each other in local restaurants and cafes. Expect to pay approximately $50 a day for meals.

Tango Lessons
San Telmo is full of dance spaces and tango academies offering lessons each night to students of all experience levels. One recommended venue is the fabled Mansion Dandi Hotel, which offers tango lessons every day of the week on the parquet floor of its chandelier-lit dance studio. For more information on taking tango lessons at the Mansion Dandi and elsewhere in Buenos Aires, please visit Tango Class in San Telmo


For more information about teacher Peter Turnley, please consult his personal website:Peterturnley.com

Turnley has published 5 books of his work:
Parisians
McClellan Street
In Times of War and Peace
Beijing Spring
Moments of Revolution

Rio-Brazil Carnival

Photographers love life, light, joy and all that touches the senses! Maybe nowhere else in the world can this be found more than in Rio - and particularly at carnival time. The Rio workshop is much more than simply an experience in photography - it offers students an exposure to a way of living which is full of energy, sensuality, outdoor activity, and humanity in one of the world’s most beautiful and exciting cities during the amazing time of the Rio Carnival.

This workshop is taught by Peter Turnley, one of the world’s leading photojournalists. Peter has worked in over 85 countries around the world and discovered the soul of Brazil while making a photographic portrait of the Brazilian national soccer team in the year leading up to the 1998 World Cup. He returns frequently to Brazil on assignment and has taught the Rio Carnival Workshop four times since 2005. Peter has fallen in love with Rio and finds it to be one of the most alive and wonderfully human cities in the world.

Peter Turnley is not only one of the leading photographers of his time, but is also a wonderful and widely respected workshop instructor. He is a master at helping students grow as he observes and encourages them to revel in the visual glory of daily life. He is also particularly adept at helping students overcome their timidity and anxiety of photographing people and is a master editor and teacher of how to create a photo story. He will help you plug into what is wonderful about your individual vision and visual passions, while giving you important insights and tips on how to grow as a visual communicator.

The Rio Carnival is at the center of the Rio Workshop experience. Students visit rehearsals of the amazing and famous Samba Schools that perform during the Carnival Parade and are exposed to some of the most amazing dancing and popular spirit found anywhere. Students follow the “blocos,” itinerant carnival celebrations, in the streets of Rio and are encouraged to spend time walking and discovering the sensuality and contrasts of life found in Rio. They are introduced to the famous beaches of the city including Ipanema and Copacabana, to the outdoor life of great parks like Lagoa, to the rhythm and music of the samba in the City’s dance halls, to captivating neighborhoods such as Lapa, and to Rio’s cafés, restaurants and night life. Rio is a city with great contrasts in social life which offers students fantastic opportunities to discover the energy of the people of Rio and to witness life through sport, dance, beaches, physical expression, music, and nightlife.

Emphasis is placed on the photographic story or essay based on each student’s chosen theme of life. Students walk the streets and beaches of the city daily, participate in trips to samba school rehearsals and are present during the amazing two day Carnival Parade at the Rio Sambodrome. Each day also includes editing the day’s “takes” and choosing the best selects for critique and sharing. The goal of this workshop is for each photographer to develop a photographic story and portfolio. 

Photographers visiting Rio come away with an experience memorable for a lifetime and this workshop promises to offer lots of excitement for the senses and for visual storytelling.

Students will develop a photo-essay covering the week at the famous Brazilian Carnival and must use digital cameras. Students must bring their own laptop and an external hard-drive for downloading and storing images. Students should have an editing program such as Aperture, Lightroom, Photoshop or Photomechanic on their computer.

Peter encourages students to have at least one wide angle fixed lens, i.e 28mm, 35mm, or 50mm, or wide-angle zoom lens and to have a lens that opens to a minimum of F2.8 as often shooting will be in low light conditions.

Rio offers amazing opportunity for visual storytelling. Because of the diverse economic and security realities of the city, it is recommended that students taking this workshop have previous experience with overseas travel and street photography and a degree of “street smarts”. Students with this background are encouraged to take this workshop; Turnley, with his vast experience in photojournalism, is an excellent instructor to help students hone their street photography skills.

Carnival Tickets
The class will attend two evenings of Rio carnival as a group at the Sambodrome in Rio. The first event, the children’s carnival, is free. For the second event, the class will attend a parade requiring tickets which cost approxmately $50. Participants must purchase tickets to this evening through our travel agent, Stockler Expeditions, when reserving your hotel room, see below.

The entire group will go to at least one other evening of the carnival, but tickets will not be necessary as we will be photographing the exciting atmosphere on the outskirts of the carnival stadium. The class will also be attending the Samba school rehearsals in the days prior to the main carnival, as well as street parties and some of the famous carnival parties such as the Scala party. Access to these is free.

Arrival
Plan to arrive on Feb 28th, or at the latest by morning March 1. The first workshop session will begin at 2pm on March 1.

Departures
The workshop ends at noon on March 8, with a final show of the students’ final 15-image photo stories made during the week. Students are free to leave on that afternoon. Those wishing to stay in the region longer are free to continue their trip.

Our Hotel
We have located a reasonably priced and comfortable hotel a few blocks from the beach, the Hotel Mirador: http://www.hotelmirador.com.br All classes will be held here. A standard single room, including buffet breakfast daily and hotel tax, for the seven nights is $1740.00 net. The price of a double room is $975 per person should participants wish to share or bring a companion. Students are encouraged to double up with another student in order to keep lodging costs down. If you are interested, send an email to  registration@theworkshops.com

Hotel and Carnival Ticket Reservations
After you have registered for the workshop, you can book your room, reserve your carnival tickets and arrange for airport transfer through Sunie at Stockler Expeditions. Sunie can also handle your airfare.

Stockler Expeditions
10266 NW 4th Court
Plantation, FL 33324
954 472 7163
800 591 2955
E-Mail: stocklers@usa.net 

Travel in Rio
Students can get from the airport to the hotel either by taxi or by arranging a transfer through our travel agent Stockler Expeditions. Sunie Stockler will quote transfer prices individually or as a group if several people in our workshop will be arriving on the same flight. Our hotel is a few blocks from Rio’s famous beaches so there will be ample subject matter within a short walk. Getting to the parades will require car-pooling in a van, which our Course Assistant, Ana, will arrange.

Meals
The first and last dinners are included in the tuition cost. There is a restaurant in the hotel and a buffet breakfast is included. Ana will make reservations for the group at nearby restaurants and help with translations and how to get around in Rio.

Visa Information
US residents need a tourist visa to travel to Brazil. These are obtainable, before departure, through any number of visa processing agencies. Google “Brazilian Visa” and you’ll find an extensive list.

Important-make sure you request a “Tourist” visa and leave enough time as the process can take a week or more.


Additional Information
The Brazilian Consulate in Washington, DC has information on travel, visas and personal safety.


Tuition Note: Includes welcome & final dinners. Travel, lodging and parade admissions additional.