WHERE: Mitchell Park Center - El Palo Alto Ball Room

3700 Middlefield Rd., Palo Alto, CA 94303

Parking is free to the public in any of the non-designated parking spaces in front of the building and at Mitchell Park.

National Geographic Traveler staff photographer, Catherine Karnow, will show you how to improve travel photography from creative compositions, getting the moment, recognizing exquisite natural light, connecting with people around the world, and creating powerful story-telling photographs.

Catherine will explain in detail what makes a photograph “sing.” Learn how Catherine puts together a set of images that tell the story of a place, hear the surprising and often crazy stories behind the photos, and how National Geographic Traveler story is conceived and produced.

Catherine’s passion for photography carries her love for teaching. She teaches the National Geographic Weekend Workshops in San Francisco, at The One School in Goa, as well as her own signature Italy Photo Workshop in Umbria this May 6-16, 2015.

ABOUT CATHERINE KARNOW

Born and raised in Hong Kong, the daughter of an American journalist, San Francisco-based photographer National Geographic photographer Catherine Karnow seems destined to have travel and photo-journalism at the center of her life. She studied photography in high school, and graduated Brown University with honors degrees in Comparative Literature and Semiotics. After a brief career as a filmmaker – her film Brooklyn Bridge premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 1984 – she turned her attention to photography full time in 1986.

Catherine has covered Australian Aborigines; Bombay film stars; victims of Agent Orange in Vietnam; Russian “Old Believers” in Alaska; Greenwich, Connecticut high society; and an Albanian farm family. In 1994, she was the only non-Vietnamese photo-journalist to accompany General Giap on his historic first return to the forest encampment in the northern Vietnam highlands from which he plotted the battle of Dien Bien Phu. She also gained unprecedented access to Prince Charles for her 2006 National Geographic feature, “Not Your Typical Radical.”

Her work appears in National Geographic, National Geographic Traveler, Smithsonian, French & German GEO and other international publications. She has also participated in several Day in the Life series, Passage to Vietnam, and Women in the Material World. Catherine Karnow is known for her vibrant, emotional and sensitive style of photographing people.

In Catherine's words, "I have been in a love affair with photography from day one, back in high school. Everything I know about photography has been from my own personal experience. I live and breathe photography. It is a beautiful way to see the world and connect with people. Discovering how much I love to teach is an extension of that joy. It is my job as a teacher to help my students express what is inside them, to help them express the beauty they see and feel.

Event registration

PACC members - no need to RSVP.
PACC members do not need to RSVP to attend special programs. It's part of the benefits of the membership. Just walk in and check at the registration stand, your name will be on a list.
Non PACC members - need to RSVP
Non-PACC members can attend the event for free after registering. Seating being limited, please reserve in advance and cancel if you cannot attend the event so that people on the waiting list have a chance to attend. If the event is full, consider getting a PACC membership which will give access to all events for 1 year without the need to RSVP (in addition to getting all the other club benefits).