Shop – blueheART STUDIOS

14 – 18 April, 2027 Film Photography Workshop

Dan Kuehn — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 13:14:54 +0000

Orvieto, ITALY

This is a six-day, 35mm and 120 film processing, proofing and printing photography class.

A new way of seeing will begin with this challenging and motivating workshop in the most beautiful and majestic of all hilltop towns in Italia… Orvieto.

We will wander and wonder as we traverse the piazzas, streets and alleys of Orvieto. Light is everywhere here, and it beckons you to make exposures that move the heart and soul while you learn about this medieval town and yourself.

During this six-day workshop you will learn… personal film speed, personal development time, the proper proof and the fine print. I have a darkroom with four enlargers and four students will alternate the use of the darkroom beginning the second day.

All you need is a simple 35mm film, or 120 camera.

Wednesday, 14 April – Sunday, 18 April, 2027 (Depart 9:00 a.m. Sunday 18 April)
$3,000 per four-night workshop
Includes free stay at Casa Terese. Airfare, meals, and ground transportation is extra.
Must bring own paper.
Three people per workshop

Dead Television, Deerfield, Colorado

Dan Kuehn — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 13:47:43 +0000

Archival Pigment Print 5x5, mounted and matted in 8x10 on 100% museum rag TechTalk iPhone SE Hipstamatic, John S lens + Uchitel 20 film

Test Product

Dan Kuehn — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 16:04:50 +0000

The Kiss

Dan Kuehn — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 18:10:30 +0000

Before The Kiss narrative, let me tell you about The Coup.

It was 2008. Some handsome man from Chicago was running for President of the United States. His most admirable quality, still, is he speaks in complete sentences. I digress… It was 2008 and I got a call from Jim Anderson, a wonderful journalist at Denver’s Associated Press office. He told me David Ake, then AP’s vice president of North America, wanted two of my best photojournalism students to help shoot the Democratic National Convention during that summer. “Only two?,” I asked. Yep… AP was going to get two of the best college shooters from 15 of the nation’s top journalism schools to help shoot the convention. Jim told me the request had come from Ake. I knew David from my days with AP in San Francisco in the early 70s. So…

I called David. We caught up and then I said, “You are not using any other shooters from any other colleges. I have 30 of the best student-photojournalists and you will use them.” To my amazement, David said, and I misquote, “Okay.”

Thirty of my shooters from the university where I was Chair of Journalism and Mass Communication worked the week before, the week during, and the week after the convention. And it was paid. Quite nicely, I might add.

The Mime Concert

Dan Kuehn — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 17:52:25 +0000

I’m culling the heard of negatives (and positives) from a fifty-plus years career as a photojournalist and I came across some rare color positives I made as a student.

I was a senior at San Jose State and stayed that extra year to get a degree in photojournalism. I was also serving an internship at The Associated Press in San Francisco. It was a Friday to Monday morning gig. I had a cot set up in the darkroom so I did not have to go back and forth from San Jose to The City.

I came up to San Francisco a day early and was at Fisherman’s Wharf when I saw this moment. I shot this on Ektachrome 100 because I was taking a color photography class as an elective and we processed our own slide film (E-6).

This moment grabbed me because of the restaurant owner in his white apron and the white fire hydrant. I framed up and waited for THE moment between the guitar player and the facial expression of the mime in the middle of the group of mimes. I just love this image.

Read more…

Woman In The Alley, Orvieto

Dan Kuehn — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 18:22:03 +0000

When I look outside myself I see what is inside.

Orvieto encourages a glance to live as something seen. The confluence of geometry and light as it collides within the discipline of the frame. The precise moment the time–space continuum is interrupted creates an indelible image that speaks to all languages, sings to all choirs and whispers to all who do not want to hear and those willing to listen.

The most profound moments, captured or not, bring us time and again to the windows of our worlds. What is outside becomes known to the inside. The dark edges of our souls caress the light we see. And the miracle of seeing is not the act of letting light in. It is the decision to jailbreak the darkness. To rid ourselves of the cultural carbohydrates that weigh us down with the hope of keeping us in our lanes. God can steer a parked car. Chances are He won’t.

There are these most wonderful alleys in Orvieto that always lead you to who you should be.

Sun from behind the clouds became the stage light for an old woman sitting at a tilted table a few feet across from water-colored paintings she had clothes-lined to the ancient wall facing her.

I was right there. Right in front of her. She, studying her hands that put things on paper that might or might not have ever existed, and me looking into a mirror.

I offer you, “Woman In The Alley, Orvieto.”

Sunbathing Branch

Dan Kuehn — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 15:02:01 +0000

Water has a mind of its own. Though bordered on two sides rivers will flow where they will. And the will of a river is strong. If it wants to meander it whispers over rocks on its seaward journey. When it is full of itself it will rush to destinations unknown like a wayward treasure hunter looking for a place marked “X.”

Photojournalists are a lot like rivers. Except we don’t go where and when we want. Hemmed in within newsrooms, seen as reporters with their brains beaten out (otherwise we’d be reporters), the only way to exist is to accept illustrations guised as assignments and make the ordinary extraordinary. The will of the photojournalist runs strong as the dedicated voice for the voiceless.

I went to the river with a newly given, yet gently used, Sinar F. With a 10″ Kodak Commercial Ektar lens from 1941 that I discovered in a desk drawer at a church, no less, I needed to test the lens for acutance and the box for light leaks. Both are mighty fine.

Here is a branch sunbathing on a lump of granite. As I framed up, metered, set the aperture and shutter and grabbed the cable release I wondered where the river was going as it wandered past the ground glass. I am a lot like this river on a destination known yet not fully discovered. As life should be.

I offer you, Sunbathing Branch.

Black Rock, Pfeiffer Beach, Big Sur, California, 2012

Dan Kuehn — Mon, 20 May 2024 14:41:07 +0000

Digital Pigment Print $100 Archival Silver Gelatin Print $400 TechTalk Hasselblad 500 CM 150mm lens, f/22 at 4 seconds Ilford Pan F (50 asa at 100 asa), processed in Rodinal 1-50 for 11 minutes at 68 degrees.

Tulips #30

Dan Kuehn — Mon, 20 May 2024 01:29:22 +0000

Archival Silver Photograph mounted and matted $250 Archival Digital Fine Print $50

A Bunch of Priests Get Photographed

Dan Kuehn — Sun, 19 May 2024 18:12:40 +0000

Priests gather outside their chapel in Orvieto, Italy for a group photo.

This image was made the night before the start of the Corpus Domini Festival in Orvieto. Held each year during the first couple of days in June, Italians come from all regions of Italy dressed in their medieval costumes for the three-day festival.