Neil Steinberg, Instructor

NEIL STEINBERG, a commercial and fine art photographer, has owned and operated Photoworks in Leesburg, Virginia, since 1979. While he has produced photographic work in a variety of areas, today he tends to concentrate on business publicity, product, and architectural photography. During his film days Neil worked almost exclusively with medium format Hasselblads and 4×5 and 8×10 Sinars, and he is still well versed in darkroom techniques. He has been an eager student in the transition to digital photography and is well known for his skills in image/art reproduction and image retouching and restoration. His studio has worked with images dating back to the early 1800s, and he has worked closely with the National Park Service and their image archives at the Harpers Ferry Media Center in West Virginia.  

Neil studied theater at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, a background that served him well when he transitioned into photography in the 1970s. In his travels, he has had the opportunity to photograph in Canada, Italy, France, Switzerland, Israel, Turkey, India, and many parts of the U.S. He tends to prefer less-than-usual landscape presentations and architectural details that often are transformed into abstract interpretations.

Along with his co-founders of The Leesburg School of Photography, Neil has a goal of imparting the love of photography to anyone willing to learn. Prior to the formation of the school, he taught students at Photoworks through a variety of week-long seminars, teen camps, and one-on-one lessons. The goal is to take less-than-familiar principles and present them in a fashion that different students will find easy to understand and employ in the pursuit of photographic art.

“Like music and language, photography requires a certain appreciation for its required skill set and structure. At Leesburg School of Photography, we want to help students become comfortable with the ‘rules’ so that, with practice, the individual is more confident in consistently expressing a desired vision.”