A brief video extract from this workshop’s Analysing Picture’s session where we investigate how pictures, both real and imagined, also come to capture hearts and minds independently of what they are a picture of.
STREAMED On-Demand Delivery
With Weekly Zoom Tutorials
This intermediate workshop is attended via streamed on-demand delivery so the course material can be studied in your own time and at your own pace, while your practice and questions are subsequently addressed, clarified and supported in our weekly Zoom tutorials. The cost is AUD $350 including all fees and charges.
Our Understanding Pictures Workshop could also be called our Visual Literacy Workshop, because without the pictorial skills and perceptual strategies this workshop presents, even the most dedicated and committed practice will get us only so far. For truly remarkable pictures are not found, they are constructed, which is so much more than understanding how cameras ‘represent the world’, or how a picture’s content can be edited in post production. Sophisticated Pictorial Design is therefore dedicated to translating, not just what is in front of the lens, but more importantly what you are seeing and feeling into a picture that captures hearts and minds above and beyond what it is a picture of.
For the ‘problem’ with photography, as with all technologically mediated art, is when it gets in the way of our understanding, making it hard to know what to pay attention to let alone why. Therefore, like any language the process needs to be deconstructed and demystified so we can work with it, not against it helping you analyse your own images, and those you admire and wish to emulate.
The workshop is presented in six recorded sessions plus tutorials, and is supported through weekly Zoom Tutorials and extensive resources – Notes, Photoshop Actions, Affinity Photo Macros – covering the following topics in a fully searchable database and accessed without restriction via the Workshop’s Resource Website.
Myths and Illusions
• The ‘burden’ of photography – fact versus fiction
• The human visual system – reality versus illusion
• The Metaphysical – beliefs, expectations and desires
• Representing colour in digital imaging workflows
• Editing colour – what do you desire?
• Imagining colour – what lets you down?
Analysing Pictures
• The structure of images
• Drawing compositions – the relationships within the image
• Tonal compositions – the drama of the image
• Colour compositions – the personality of the image
• Spatial compositions – our presence and agency
• Temporal compositions – our histories and narratives
Building Pictures
• The Elements of Pictorial Design
• Figures and grounds
• Line and Direction
•. Shape and Size
• Texture and Tone
• Hue and Chroma
Designing Pictures
• The Principles of Pictorial Design
• Diagonals, corners, quadrants, edges
• Form & Repetition – Vigilance & Habituation
• Harmony & Discord – Unity & Conflict
• Gradation & Contrast – Dominance & Balance
• Rhythm, Melody & Syncopation – odds against evens
Creating Pictorial Affect
• Picturing things – Picturing feelings
• The nature of light, shade, and shadow
• Linear Perspective – lines, shapes and dimensions
• Aerial Perspective – temporal and spatial relationships
• Imaginative Perspective – elements of coercion
• Emotional theories of scale and aspect ratios
Case Studies
• Ontological frameworks (Meaning and Affect)
• Symbols, metaphors, archetypes and equivalents (Pictorialism)
• Inherent versus imposed values (Structuralism)
• Brahms Symphony no.1 – Furtwangler and Bernstein (Classicism)
• Virgil Donati (Contemporary Music and Performance)
• Bill Henson (Contemporary Photography and Installation)
The ‘Flipped Classroom’ facilitates a uniquely comprehensive yet individual learning experience where your creativity, knowledge and needs focus the inquiry, while your engagement and participation defines your outcomes. Our live-streamed Zoom Tutorials are designed to maximise our time together clarifying the course content and answering any follow-up questions and topics.
Venue: STREAMED On-Demand delivery
Duration: 10+ hours (workshop & tutorials)
Resources: Extensive course notes, videos, test images, actions, macros, luts
Cost: AUD $350 (includes all fees and charges)
More Information: See FAQ (Education)
What are the differences between your Understanding Pictures, Exhibition Preparation and Thinking Photography workshops? Our Understanding Pictures workshop concentrates on Pictorial Design and the construction of your pictures for enhanced aesthetic affect. Exhibition Preparation focuses on the preparation and refinement of your images for public presentation in galleries, publications and online. Thinking Photography refines the scholarship and rationale underlying both the construction and presentation of your images. Therefore these workshops effectively address the What, How and Why of research based contemporary artistic practice’s creative and cultural contributions.
Updated 04 March 2026