Mills Mansion
E-MAIL US AT [email protected] OR CALL 1-877-372-2231 OR click here TO LEARN ABOUT OUR PRIVATE ALL DAY OR HALF DAY CLASS
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More than once, the December photo workshops have been canceled due to cold weather, so this time the DPA venue will allow us to hedge our bet at the Mills Mansion, a Beaux-Arts Estate and a State Historic Site along the Hudson River, that sits on 192 acres and features 65 rooms, 14 bathrooms and 23 fireplaces. With spectacular landscaping and hiking paths, the outdoor scenery is also a photo op, so portfolio worthy images are likely whether shooting inside, outside or both.
If Mother Nature says so, your instructor will obey and teach the art of capturing an interior space with soft winter window light sweeping across opulently designed rooms, demonstrating vantage points that optimize the likelihood of well composed results. Hone your skills to capture a photographic narrative of centuries past, in a rich still life of everything and anything from antiques, silver tea sets, and plush fabrics or go for angular perspectives of patterned hallway floor designs and mirrors. As it will be December, there will also be the choice of nostalgic depictions or abstractions of colorful holiday decorations and lights on display just as they were each year, from 1890 forward, to bring in the year end season for parties attended by the celebrities, very well-to-do, robber-barons and other swells of the day who came to celebrate with the owners, descendants of the financier, Ogden Mills.
If the weather allows the group can also slip outside for majestic landscapes along the Hudson River with early afternoon sweet light, culminating in a 4:26 PM sunset. There are special techniques to maximizing the quality of a sunset photo shoot during winter months and your instructor will have plenty of advice.
Whether inside, outside or both you will be the recipient of the demonstration of 8 different composition strategies to help you walk away with further development of your own signature style for taking photographs, adding to your artillery of photographic techniques and choices for future picture-taking activities of every sort.
The venue has an $8 entry charge or $6 for seniors. The group will meet at the entrance:
Mills Mansion 75 Mills Mansion Drive, Staatsburg, NY 12580
All Hudson Valley shoots begin at Digital Photo Academy at 15 Powder Mill Rd., Newburgh, NY 12550 with a lecture to prepare you for an in-the-field shoot. If there’s any time, we can all cross the street to photograph the park which is featured on the National Historic Register as a tribute to it’s former existence from 1815 to 1901 as a gun powder mill that in it’s peak had an annual production load of 49 tons of gun powder. (Coincidentally, historical records report 49 powder explosions during the life of the mill. Be sure to take a look by the fireplace in the Digital Photo Academy Head Quarters of Mr. Smith’s tombstone who was killed in one of the explosions.)
Call Digital Photo Academy at 1 877 372 2231. Lots of people seem to hang up if our welcome recording comes on instead of a live voice, but we promise to return your message within a day or two if you leave one with your name and number. It would be even better if you included your e mail address as well as the date and city of the class you are considering. If leaving a voice mail message is not your thing, please email us at [email protected].
Top Map: Digital Photo Academy HQ / Bottom Map: Site of today’s In-the-field shoot