Photography Workshops – NJ / NYC
I present personal photography workshops and tutoring sessions which are tailored to your needs and to your schedule. These individual workshops are available as well throughout the year, depending on both of our schedules. My studio is only 17 miles from Manhattan. Just a short hop from New York and quite accessible by bus. Oh, and there’s parking at the studio. Free parking.
If you are limited in how far you can travel, there are online tutoring sessions via video calls to help you get a much better understanding of photography and lighting techniques.
- Recaps of previous workshops, with feedback from attendees.
- Also, here are the results you can expect to achieve yourself! It’s well within your reach.
The workshops are intended to give you confidence in your technique, and in using your photo gear. My approach is to teach photographers how to achieve what they want to. What we are aiming for, are those “aaaah, NOW I get it!” moments. Any aspects of flash photography that had been elusive up until then – whether it is a technique or bit of theory – should fall into place.
1. Personal workshops – New Jersey / NJ (with models)
- location: my studio in NJ | (directions)
2. Personal workshops – New York / NYC (with models)
3. Studio lighting workshops (with models)
- location: my studio in NJ | (directions)
4. NYC Photo Walks (with a model)
5. In-person tutoring sessions
- location: my studio in NJ | (directions)
6. Online tutoring sessions
Contact me
Please feel free to e-mail me or phone me at 862-485-7276, for more information about the workshops.
If you’d like to be updated about upcoming workshops (and other snippets of news and info), then there is the monthly newsletter that you can subscribe to.
thank you
Neil van Niekerk
photography books by Neil vN
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Best photo class I’ve attended based on:
Nice blend of hands-on work and instruction time
Great explanation of background exposure (choosing what’s important in the scene)
Final class exercise on day 1 really tied things together
Appreciated your help and comments during class
Top-notch venue
Investment in the workshop really shows (ie pocketwizards for everyone)
Very well organized
Professional models who are experienced; nice wardrobe selection
Overall a great experience – thank you.
Jeremy Miracle
You’re amazing and giving. What we learned in a day easily helped us shoot up way past our competition. You are a guy that we hope our competition never gets to know.
We always wish you the best and always tell our friends about your work.
Thank you again and I hope you have a great holiday season
– Amish & Pravin
I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for the workshop experience in Dana Point, California. Thanks for sharing your knowledge, expertise, and experience with us. It was truly an incredible hands-on learning experience. The workshop was a perfect blend of seminar presentation and hands-on training.
Hey Neil
I really want to thank you for the workshop I attended in Dublin yesterday. It was an unbelievable and awesome experience to hear if from the man himself.
It really helped to blend all the theory together, you managed to answer my questions without me having to ask them! You gave a full on 100% effort and it is really appreciated. Jess is also a fantastic assistant and she moves along in perfect timing as the workshop evolves during the day and both of you displayed unbelievable commitment and professionalism to ensure that everyone on the course got those Ah Ha moments.
Cheers
Andrew
Neil the October 25 seminar was excellent; my only regret is that I had not taken this seminar sooner. You thoroughly covered all the topics list in the description of the seminar. As I shoot with Sony cameras I was concerned I wouldn’t get the full benefit of the photo sessions, but you accommodated me and I was able to take full advantage of the photo sessions.
The models Aleona and Anelisa were very professional and a pleasure to work with. Jessica had everything ready and kept the seminar moving.
Great job, I got a lot out of it, Thanks.
Quin
Oh, please come “home” and do one in South Africa. Thank you so much for sharing and pouring out your passion for brilliantly creative and technical detail on light and exquisite photography. I am inspired by every visit to your site and secretly excited to learn how to take my photography to a new level. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
I attended Neil’s May 2012 and can honestly say that I am now twice the photographer that I was before his workshop. Thanks Neil!
Just wanted to send a quick note to say thank you for the great workshop (May 2012)! Working with you to put all the techniques I’ve been reading about into practice was both enlightening and inspiring. I love your simple approach to lighting and the amazing results you can get with it. Every where I go I find myself trying to see the quality and direction of light :)
It may sound strange but after reading your books and following your site for so long I almost felt like I already knew both you and Anelisa, and finally getting to meet and work with the two of you was a real pleasure.
If I had one regret it’s that I didn’t think to take pull back shots of each set up we tried while other attendees were shooting. Hindsight is always 20/20 I guess. Anyhow, thanks again for a stellar experience. Travelling the long way to New York from Edmonton, Canada was well worth it, several times over.
Cheers!
Sean.
I attended the Sept 2011 Dublin Workshop and have to say that Neil is a fantastic, enthusiastic mentor who will explain everything as many times as you need until it all clicks into place!! Thank you Neil.
I would do it again as I absorbed so much info.
Come back to Ireland!!
Dear Neil,
Your work has a captivating edge, and your instruction in the disciplines of photography is indeed a beacon for anyone who genuinely desires to advance in what has become a very highly competitive field. In my mind, there are very, very few other instructors today who possess your unique acumen.
Your photography is honest and inspiring; for me, your course was as memorable and important as the workshop I took with Ansel Adams at UC Santa Cruz in June/July of 1969.
Kudos, my friend.
Sc Rogers
I have taken a couple of private workshops with Neil… he is really patient, and willing to cover the same ground over and over until you understand what you are doing…
Since working with him my lighting skills have taken a quantum leap. He unlocked all kinds of mysteries for me and for that I am forever grateful!
Neil, I just wanted to let you know the October 2012 flash workshop was not only a ton of fun, but it has really transformed my technique, by ‘opening a few new doors’ for me. ‘Liberating’ would be more accurate.
I am in awe of the things you can do by applying a very few basic, but powerful concepts, like the direction of the light, the light fallout with distance (the square root thing for techies) and adjusting my metering.
I did an event last night, at a dark, dim lit restaurant that was followed by a party… I had all kinds of gear with me… I ended up using 4 things for about 90% of the shoot:
– My main camera (of course I had backup gear)
– A single, camera mounted flashgun
– battery pack for the flashgun
– The black foamie thing (BFT)
Yes, BFT. It just rules!!!. Unbelievable, bouncing flash off the walls and ceiling, I spent the most of the evening shooting at ISO 2000, with apertures between 6 and 9!!! Group shots, action shots, dance shots, the whole chimichanga!
So thanks again for such a GREAT and useful event. Your hands-on/theory approach is just very effective, and it shows that you enjoy what you are doing.
Sincerely,
Cesar
Now I am back home in Germany. Slowly, I find time to look at and work with all the photos and photo series. This workshop was very very good. I learned very much and I’ve got a lot of wow experiences, so I better understand relationships between these photo series with exif data. I want to say thank you for the good spirit in the workshop. All, Neil, Eric, Anelisa and Aleona have done a great professional job. Of course I also mean in this context, all the food and drink in the breaks and lunch in the restaurant. Every photo of this day is a great treasure for me. I learned so much.
Nice greetings,
Volkmar
I just wanted to take a moment and thank you again for the amazing amount of information and learning experiances at yesterdays class! I said it yesterday and I’ll say it again today – I wish I had taken your class 3 years ago! It would have saved me countless hours in lightroom and photoshop and in guessing and second guessing myself. So thank you again!!!!
And if anyone is on the fence about Neil’s On-Location Lighting Workshop….JUST TAKE IT! Best money you will ever spend for your continued education! And you won’t be disappointed.
I just took the September workshop and learned so, so much. Neil was great to work with and because of the small class size he is able to answer any questions and give one on one attention. After the class I think OCF will be a regular part of my work. The class was 11 hours total and I wish it was longer!!!! Thanks again Neil and I look forward to attending a future workshop.
Hi Neil,
Must say you’re a great teacher – your books are my favorite. Easy to follow one day I would’ve to attend a class. What strobes are being use in the shot above where a guy is holding two Profoto softboxes?
Sean … techie details here:
https://neilvn.com/tangents/gear-updated-flash-photography-workshop/
Loving this site, and this is not actually a suggestion for a workshop topic, but rather a question whether it would be possible to have a workshop in Europe at some point. I would gladly pay the price for a workshop, but spending money on plane tickets and hotels by far exceeds the workshop cost. A tour or something in Europe would have been nice. Would that be possible in the future?
Rickard …
As I mention in comment #2 in the flash photography workshops announcement post:
The logistics and the financial risk make it tough to pull these off.
There have been a number of workshops I have presented abroad – Amsterdam (2012), and Dublin, Ireland (2011), and workshops in Brighton (UK) and Birmingham (UK) in 2009, and as well as Cork, Ireland.
So traveling workshops could still happen, but I would have to carefully consider them, and there would have to be someone there who is experienced in this, to help arrange things. Just as importantly, there has to be some assurance that enough people will attend.
I attended the September 25, 2016 workshop on Off-Camera Flash. The class was fabulous! Neil demystified a subject which confounds many photographers. The models were great, and by the time we went on location in the afternoon, I was shooting like a pro! I highly recommend this class if you want to take your photography to the next level!
Well, the E-book “On camera flash” is the wonderfully well written. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
I attended the September flash workshop – and it was a wonderful experience in every way. I can’t imagine any better opportunity to learn so much about flash. But also…it is rare to find such an expert about something who is also a gifted teacher, plus a delightful person. Neil is all of these things. It was an unforgettable experience and one that I highly recommend.
Personal Workshop 9/17/18
I took the a personal workshop with Neil and highly recommend it for anyone looking to improve his or her portrait photography. The workshop covered exposure, lighting, posing and many other aspects of portrait photography. Neil is a very effective instructor and presents the material is an easy-to-understand manner. My biggest “aha moment” was learning that very nice portraits can be taken without thousands of dollars in lighting equipment. I was also amazed how common things in the environment can make great portrait backdrops.
Anelisa was the model during my workshop. She is a talented, beautiful and professional model, who is easy to work with. Being a beginner, I appreciated her ability pose without direction. This allowed me to concentrate on learning the material. During my workshop, Anelisa presented multiple looks: youthful, sophisticated, professional, playful. All were well executed and a joy to photograph.
Thank you Neil and Anelisa. I hope to see in another workshop in the future.