Pen & Pictures: Writing for Photographers
with Janée Baugher

March 12, 2025
6 Weeks
Original price was: $445.00.$380.00Current price is: $380.00.
Zoom sessions Tuesdays from 7-8 PM Eastern
Original price was: $445.00.$380.00Current price is: $380.00.Enroll Now
Are you already using your own writing to accompany your photography — or do you want to know how to get started? This generative writing course is designed for amateur, professional, or aspiring photographers of all stripes.
As a photographer, you hone a keen eye, artistic drive, and a distinct aesthetic. This creative writing course is designed to complement and expand your visual storytelling, using words to explore new dimensions of your creativity. Through playful and associative techniques, you’ll draft poems, fiction, and personal stories that enhance your artistry. You’ll delve into verbal imagery, liberate your imagination, and discover ways to bridge the gap between the visual and written word.
This course is perfect if you want to write artist statements, create compelling titles for your work, develop written pieces to accompany your photography, explore ekphrastic writing inspired by your own or others’ art, or explore any other intersection between your photography and writing.
Assignments will cover topics such as the artistic process, photography tools and techniques, and writing beyond what cameras can capture. You’ll also explore temporal and spatial description, creating standalone written pieces that complement your photos or can be integrated into mixed-media projects.
By the end of the course, you’ll have a portfolio of writing to pair with your art, or to stand alone as a creative accomplishment. I will also customize assignments tailored to your specific photography and writing goals. In addition to sharing your writing, you’ll have the chance to share your photography, fostering collaboration and connection within a supportive creative community.
Who this Course is For
This course is perfect for amateur, professional, or aspiring photographers who are eager to pair their visual art with written expression, whether you’re new to writing or already exploring it alongside your photography. It’s ideal for those who want to expand their creative practice through verbal imagery and storytelling.
Learning and Writing Goals
Learning Goals
In this course, you will:
- Be introduced to the work of a dozen photographers, finding inspiration and ideas from each one.
- Explore a myriad of ways in which seeing and writing can unite.
- Discover a better understanding of how to write creatively without inhibitions.
Writing Goals
In this course, you will:
- Complete a freewrite of at least 400 words per day.
- Develop a list of writing project ideas and concepts for new pictures.
- End the course with solid drafts of six poems, three essays, or two stories.
Zoom Schedule
Our first Zoom meeting will be Wednesday, March 12th from 7-8 PM Eastern. All subsequent Zoom meetings will be held each week on Tuesdays, from 7-8 PM Eastern.
Activities include all-group in-class writing time with new prompts, all-class discussions, and questions for the instructor on writing and photography.
Weekly Syllabus
Week One: Shifting Perspectives
Susan Sontag in On Photography observes, “the camera makes exotic things near, intimate; and familiar things small abstract, strange, much further away. It offers, in one easy, habit-forming activity, both participation and alienation in our own lives and those of others.”
Assignment: Find photographs (your own or other’s) in which there’s tension in perspective. Write a poem, essay, or story in which you explore this subject.
Week Two: Family Album
In Another Way of Telling, authors Berger and Mohr caution us, “A photograph is a meeting place where the interests of the photographer, the photographed, the viewer and those who are using the photographs are often contradictory.”
Assignment: Given one specific family picture from your own album, explore the various angles of its “meeting place.”
Week Three: Picture Not Taken
While there are good reasons to take a picture, there are equally good reasons not to take certain pictures.
Assignment: What picture have you not taken? Describe this notional picture in vivid detail.
Week Four: Decisions, Decisions
Here’s an opportunity for you to explore the poetic possibilities of your photographic process. Consider your artistic decisions, including what film to use and how to develop it; whether to use color or no color; whether to improvise or be spontaneous; how to construct a composition; the selection of a light source, including location and intensity; which details to focus in on; where you as the photographer are positioned; the position of the subjects/objects; how, why, what to crop; and the size and orientation of the photograph.
Assignment: Given your most recent series of work, write about how the totality of your decisions yield art.
Week 5: Self-Portraits
Either by using your own artwork or someone else’s (e.g. Cindy Sherman, Frida Kahlo), where are your self-portraits? Keep in mind that they can be abstract and portray no human figure whatsoever.
Assignment: Once you’ve found the images that resonate as your self-portraits, explore your relationship to the images in an essay, poem, or story.
Week 6: Interdisciplinary Projects
Beyond cross-disciplinary projects—writing that you create informed by your expertise in photography—interdisciplinary projects (ones in which you incorporate your writing and your photographic images on a single matrix) is an inventive way to display the dualism of your artistic acumen.
Assignment: Create drafts of one or two such projects.
Original price was: $445.00.$380.00Current price is: $380.00.Enroll Now
Student Feedback for Janée Baugher:
This is a brilliant course packed with value and substance. It changed the entire way I have approached writing- for the better. I highly recommend this class for EVERY writer- no matter where you are in your journey. It should be a requirement for all of us. Thank you to Janee for helping me find my words and save them from being lost forever. Lisa Hamidi
These last six weeks have felt like a dance through the halls of both mystery and possibility. There is so much information and excitement in this programme that I will keep re-exploring these lessons over and over again. Glen Cohen
Entertaining and knowledgeable. KF
She’s the most professional writing teacher I’ve ever met. TZ
Her commitment and genuine care is clear for all to see. JN
In this class, I found a safe place to share poetry, while receiving honest feedback. SJ
I am grateful for the balance of poetic knowledge and instinct with her scientific sensibilities. JA
Her class has a simple elegance to it….It offers something to everyone on the spectrum, whether you’re just a bit curious or a poet in the making. LH
March 12, 2025
6 Weeks
Original price was: $445.00.$380.00Current price is: $380.00.
Early Bird! Enroll now & save 15% until February 10
Zoom sessions Tuesdays from 7-8 PM Eastern
Original price was: $445.00.$380.00Current price is: $380.00.Enroll Now