The Jotting
A short Jotting, this one, because the workshop itself does most of the talking.
On Saturday 23rd May 2026, from 10am to 3pm, I'll be running a one-day portrait workshop at the Downtown LA studio on Recreating Caravaggio. Five hours, two lights, professional models, and a small enough room that nobody can hide at the back. Tickets are $450, places are limited, and the date is closer than the calendar makes it look.
A few words about why this workshop, and why now.
I came to portraiture through painting before I came to it through photography. Caravaggio first, then Ribera, then the long Spanish school — Velázquez, Zurbarán — and eventually back to Northern Europe, to Rembrandt and Holbein. By the time I picked up a camera, the eye had already been trained by four hundred years of people who understood, with absolute clarity, that a face is sculpted by shadow, not by light.
Most modern portraiture has forgotten this. The default look in 2026 is flat, frontal, evenly lit, agreeable — the photographic equivalent of a polite handshake. There's nothing wrong with it; there's nothing in it, either. The Old Masters knew that the part of a face you don't see does as much work as the part you do, and that drama in a portrait comes from withholding rather than from showing.
This workshop is about getting that language back into your hands. Not as pastiche — I have no interest in making 2026 portraits that pretend to be 1601 — but as a working method. Caravaggio's logic, translated into a modern studio, with modern lights and modern sitters. Chiaroscuro and tenebrism as tools you can actually use on a Tuesday morning in Manhattan or a Friday afternoon in London, not as art-school vocabulary you nod at and forget.
What we'll work through, over five hours:
Caravaggio-style lighting with one or two sources — and why a third light usually ruins it
Shaping a face with shadow rather than flattening it with fill
Building depth, drama and narrative inside a single frame
Directing a sitter for stillness, weight and authenticity (the half of portrait photography most workshops never teach you)
Translating the painting principles directly into modern camera, lens and exposure choices
Live demonstrations with professional models — you'll see the lighting built from scratch, watched from the front of the room
Small-group shooting time on the same setups, with real-time critique and direction coaching from me
This is about seeing light, not just placing it. The placement bit is the easy half.
Who this is for
Portrait photographers who want a distinctive, timeless visual language rather than the current flat-lit default. Artists who feel the modern look has run out of road. Anyone whose Saturday-night reading drifts toward cinema, painting, or art history rather than gear reviews. Beginners welcome — there's no skill floor — but the day is built to push experienced photographers as much as it teaches new ones.
If you make actor headshots, editorial portraits, or fine-art personal work, this is directly applicable. If you make corporate headshots, this will give you the option of a richer, more painterly product to offer the clients who want it (most C-suites do, once they see the difference).
The practical bits
Date: Saturday, 23 May 2026
Time: 10:00 AM — 3:00 PM
Location: Rory Lewis Inc., 411 S Main Street, Unit 222, Downtown Los Angeles, 90013 (inside the historic Farmers & Merchants Bank Building)
Cost: $450
Parking: Paragon Parking, 401 S Spring Street — 24/7, short walk to the studio
Group size: Deliberately small. No back row.
Skill level: All welcome
Booking: Book your place — limited availability
Step inside the world of the Old Masters and learn how to recreate the dramatic power of Caravaggio using modern tools—without losing the soul of the work.
This hands-on portrait photography workshop in Los Angeles is led by Rory Lewis, internationally recognized for cinematic, painterly portraiture inspired by Caravaggio, Ribera, Rembrandt, and Holbein. The focus: chiaroscuro, tenebrism, and emotional presence—light that sculpts, darkness that speaks.
A note on "limited availability," because the phrase has been cheapened by every gym membership offer in history: in this case it's structurally limited. The studio holds a particular number of people comfortably and a smaller number productively. We'll cap the day at the second figure, not the first. Once those places are gone, the next workshop won't be until later in the year.
If you've been meaning to deepen your portrait language, or if you've watched the Soldati series and the actor work and wondered how the lighting actually goes together, this is the day to find out. Five hours, downtown, two lights, a room of people who care about the same things you do.
Add to your calendar — Google · ICS — and I'll see you in the studio on the 23rd.
— RL, Los Angeles, May 2026