Heart and Soul Gallery
Salvador de Bahia, Brazil 2009
® Helene Cyr
Ernesto’s open and honest heart led us to the most remarkable places…places I would never have dared to venture. It was an immense privilege to feel so welcomed by those Brazilians whose paths we crossed and who are so incredibly resilient and filled to the brim with soul. I’ve learned that beauty exists where least expected and that the pursuit of a stronger picture is forever ongoing! That’s the beauty!
If you are curious about human beins and their environs, if you can handle honesty, and if you wish to push yourself, then I highly recommend this workshop! As it is, I miss the great ladies that were our group and Ernesto’s infectious passion for life.
Helene Cyr
® Marge Silverberg
My workshop with EB was the most challenging and rewarding photographic experience ever. His humane approach to people on the edge allowed me to move close to my subject, particularly difficult for me as a psychotherapist respecting boundaries. Recording the emotional moment became the subject and sensitivity to it the means. I am indebted to him and the four exceptional women in our group for helping me make the leap to a different level. Thanks again. Love
Marge Silverberg
® Nancy Falconer
My third workshop with Ernesto deepened my commitment to return and return. While I had initial doubts about doing the ‘same’ workshop as I’d done two years earlier, he wisely reminded me: “There are immense gifts in returning”. The teacher of course was right…it is never ‘the same’, and you are never the same – you are seeing with different eyes each time. Thank you Ernesto for your wisdom, patience, and generous heart. There were some intensely moving moments that will forever shape my life going forward. As always the workshop experience remains both inspiring and deeply humbling, pulling from each of us something more than we knew we had. In this instance, being all women, it was also especially rich with laughter and some ‘firsts’. Along with finding grace in desperate places, I shall forever savor my midnight swim under a Brazilian full moon!
Thank you Marge, Pam, Helene, and Willard. E obrigado mil vezes Ernesto.
Nancy Falconer
® Pam Richmond
I had heard from friends that Salvador was a beautiful city situated on a magnificent bay and blessed with a tropical climate. All true and the perfect setting for a marvelous photo workshop. Ernesto led us into poor neighborhoods, charming fishing village and farm communities, beautiful beaches and colonial era barrios. Everywhere people were friendly, open and beautiful. The Bahianos won my heart as they obviously had yours Ernesto. The maestro’s warm connection with people made it possible for us to capture rewarding photographs in a few short days. Our group of wonderful women and a few magical moonlight swims were the festive sparklers. Thank you Ernesto!
Pam Richmond
® Willard Plate
Last year when I wrote my comments about the workshop in Salvador, I said that Brazil was my new Cuba. This year’s workshop was further confirmation of that feeling. That’s both because of the African heritage that pervades both cultures and because I’m beginning to reap the rewards of “going back” like I did in Cuba. No matter where I follow Ernesto–Peru, Mexico, Sicily–I, like all his other students, grow from his teaching. But the big spurts of growth come, I think, when I follow his advice about returning to the same places. Because of my own teaching schedule and the schedule of Ernesto’s workshops, that place is now most often Salvador. So each year I return, and hopefully shall continue to return to the familiarity of the Chocolate Factory and the fishing village, where I am enough at ease to discover something “new” in the familiarity.
Of course, I go on Ernesto’s workshops because he helps me to become a better photographer. But an added benefit is the companionship of fellow photographers of all ages and nationalities. And I just want to say that being with this group was especially rewarding.
Willard Pate
