October 17, 2026 | 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM | PGP Studio, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Light & Subject is a hands-on portrait photography masterclass in Albuquerque, New Mexico, taught together by Nino Batista and Briana Noir. It brings two different areas of experience into the same room: Nino's years of professional portrait photography, lighting, retouching, and photography education, and Briana's extensive experience as a professional model, photographer, creative collaborator, and educator from the other side of the camera.

That's important, because this isn't simply a studio lighting class with a model standing in front of the lights. We're teaching this together.

The entire workshop is built around one central goal: we want you to leave more confident in your own decisions. That means understanding light and knowing how to shape it, but it also means understanding the person you're photographing, communicating effectively, directing with intention, recognizing what is and isn't working, and being willing to improvise when reality doesn't match the plan.

Two Perspectives on the Same Photograph

Nino's approach to the workshop comes from more than 15 years of photographing people in well over a hundred studios and shooting spaces, teaching photographers around the world, and continually studying the technical and creative decisions that make portrait photography work. We'll dig into portrait lighting, light placement, modifiers, hard and soft light, contrast, shadow, shape, depth, troubleshooting, and adapting those tools to the photograph you're actually trying to create.

Briana brings an equally important perspective. Her years in the modeling industry, combined with her own experience working with countless photographers and as a model educator, give her a deep understanding of posing, movement, body awareness, expression, communication, direction, and the photographer-model relationship. She'll teach not simply what a pose looks like, but what direction feels like from the other side of the lens, why certain approaches to communication work better than others, and how genuine collaboration can produce photographs that neither photographer nor subject would necessarily create alone.

And that's where the workshop becomes Light & Subject. Those aren't two separate classes we're cramming into four hours. They're two sides of the same photographic process.

Lighting, Direction, Communication and Collaboration

Throughout the workshop, we'll work together to show how decisions on one side of the camera affect everything happening on the other. Move the light and the pose may need to change. Change the body position and suddenly the shadows behave differently. A technical idea may require better communication to make it happen. A movement from the subject may reveal a lighting possibility the photographer hadn't considered.

We'll experiment with studio lighting, modifiers, light position and distance, hard and soft light, contrast, posing, movement, expression, subject direction, communication, and collaborative image-making as interconnected parts of portrait photography.

Rather than simply presenting finished setups, we'll talk through the decisions as they're happening. Why this light? Why this position? Why that pose? What is Briana seeing or feeling that Nino can't see from behind the camera? What is Nino seeing through the lens that Briana can't see from where she's standing? How do those two perspectives communicate with each other and meet somewhere in the middle?

That's the process we want you to see and participate in.

Learning to Improvise

Another major part of Light & Subject is improvisation. After years of working in studios and locations of every imaginable kind, we've both learned that the reality of a shoot is almost never exactly what you pictured beforehand.

Every space, subject, wardrobe choice, piece of equipment, and creative idea introduces variables. You may arrive with a plan and immediately discover that another approach makes more sense. Something may not work at all. Something completely unexpected may work beautifully.

Being able to improvise is important. Being willing to improvise is even more important.

We'll explore how to assess the space you're actually working in, recognize possibilities, adapt lighting and posing, modify an original concept, simplify when necessary, and solve problems without becoming married to a particular lighting diagram or preconceived shot. The goal is to become more comfortable looking at whatever you're given and asking, Okay, what can we do here?

And sometimes we'll deliberately try something that doesn't work, because understanding why it failed can teach you considerably more than being handed a polished setup and told where to stand.

A Hands-On Albuquerque Photography Masterclass

Light & Subject is designed to be interactive. We'll photograph, demonstrate, experiment, move, adjust, analyze, communicate, improvise, and discuss what we're seeing throughout the workshop. You'll experience the technical and human decisions happening together in real time rather than only seeing the finished photograph after those decisions have already been made.

The principles we'll explore apply directly to portrait photography, beauty photography, fashion photography, editorial photography, glamour photography, boudoir photography, and studio photography, but they're useful for virtually anyone who photographs people.

All experience levels are welcome. Curiosity matters considerably more to us than how many years you've been shooting. Whether you're relatively new to photographing people or you've been doing this professionally for years, we want you leaving Albuquerque better able to walk into a space, meet the person you're photographing, understand what you're trying to create, communicate that idea, adapt to what's actually happening, and start making intentional decisions.

That's what Light & Subject means to us. Not photographer and model. Not technical skills versus human skills. Two people collaborating to make a photograph.

Light & Subject | Albuquerque, New Mexico

Nino Batista & Briana Noir
October 17, 2026 | 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM

PGP Studio
7425 4th St NW
Los Ranchos De Albuquerque, NM 87107

All experience levels welcome | Space intentionally limited

REGISTRATION: To ensure a personalized experience, registration is handled directly through Nino and Briana. We're intentionally keeping the group limited so everyone has meaningful access to both of us, the demonstrations, discussions, shooting process, and hands-on learning throughout the workshop.

To register or ask questions, DM either of us directly or email nbp@ninobatista.com.

Nino: @ninobatista
Briana: @briana.noir