Instructor: Navaeh Richardson
Thursdays | July 16, 23, 30, August 6, 13, 20, 2026 | 7:00-9:00 pm | beginner-intermediate | $120 | photography | Falls Church Arts Gallery
This hands-on experimental photography course explores light not simply as a tool for illumination, but as a creative material in itself — a palette shaped by light, time, and movement. Using long exposures, camera movement, found objects, and unconventional light sources, students will create atmospheric and abstract images that blur the boundaries between photography, sculpture, and performance.
Participants are encouraged to bring unusual or personal light sources — flashlights, lamps, LEDs, projectors, reflective materials, phones, toys, or anything capable of producing or manipulating light — and experiment through guided exercises, collaborative play, and constructed still lifes. As the course progresses, students will move toward building staged environments and photographing human subjects, developing an intuitive and exploratory approach to image-making that prioritizes experimentation, atmosphere, and personal visual language over technical perfection.
Nevaeh Richardson is a photographer and visual artist whose work explores liminality, identity, and transformation through long exposure photography and experimental image-making. Using light as both subject and material, their practice incorporates movement, constructed environments, and unconventional lighting techniques to create atmospheric and dreamlike images. Their work encourages experimentation, intuition, and the reimagining of photography beyond documentation.