Photos: Young Alaska photographers learn from the pros

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Anchorage photographer Clark James Mishler coaches young photographers Deroy Brandt and Xenia Vlieger on location lighting. July 30, 2013

On a recent Tuesday evening at Westchester Lagoon, with the sun slowly setting and temperatures hovering around 70 degrees, two young photographers were getting a master's class in lighting from two of Alaska's most successful professional photographers.

Passing bikers and runners slowed down to watch an excited Clark James Mishler demonstrate a simple one-light setup for location lighting, climbing on a step ladder on the edge of waist-high grass in order to get a better angle of the model, UAA photographer Xenia Vlieger.

"See how the light from the strobe makes her pop? And you can dial down the background like this..." said Mishler, who led the day's lesson.

Vlieger and fellow UAA student Deroy Brandt are paired up with Mishler and Jeff Shultz, the official Iditarod photographer and former owner of the photo agency Alaska Stock. They are the first Alaskans to participate in the Young Photographers Alliance (YPA), a worldwide photography mentorship program.

The YPA offers young photographers a chance to spend 10 weeks learning about the business from established pros. Topics range from the creative, like the lighting demonstration, to the practical, like how to manage your photography business.

The international YPA theme for 2013 is "escape," and each student is approaching the topic in a different way. "My approach to the theme of escape has been to explore the moment between the beginning and end of an escape," says Brandt. "Whether this is a literal form of escape or an abstraction of the word. My work is an abstraction of these moments of escape."

Vlieger's approach is more personal. "I chose to approach the theme of 'escape' by recreating several of my own nightmares that reflect anxiety in literal and metaphorical ways. Often, dreams are seen as an escape from reality, but there are real-life fears and anxieties that are inescapable, even in the dreamworld."

Even the professionals are learning something. "It has been confirmed for me that interpretation of a concept will most likely be somewhat different for each person and what I think is just that -- what I think," says Shultz. "Others may have different ideas and opinions on the meaning of a word or what makes good art, and their idea may be what I consider better than mine or less than my ideal, but nonetheless, it is a valid point. And if I disagree with that view, it's okay."

To see what Brandt and Vlieger have accomplished this summer, come to a free "Farewell to Summer" presentation that the American Society of Media Photographers is having 7 p.m. Oct. 1 at Anchorage Museum at Rasumson Center.

Contact Loren Holmes at loren(at)alaskadispatch.com