Photography with intention
You already know your camera. The hard part is choosing: what to include, what to leave out, and when to press the shutter. On a LUMINA Experience you photograph every day with Per Valentin and review your pictures together each evening. Max 12 participants.
Nine days in Palermo: hard light, streets and markets — and an image review every evening. Max 12 participants.
You can take the picture. The question is why.
Most people who find LUMINA are not short of technique. They have the camera, the experience and the travels. What is missing is direction: what belongs in the frame, what does not, when to wait and when to move.
More photographs do not make a stronger photographer. Better decisions do.
- —You see the situation before you raise the camera.
- —You choose deliberately — and leave out just as deliberately.
- —You simplify the frame instead of filling it.
- —You can say why a photograph works.
- —Your images begin to look like you — at home as well.
You do not leave with a formula. You leave with a way of working.
The Lumina Method™
“When images begin to speak.”
The Lumina Method™ is Per Valentin's way of working. It is for photographers who know their camera but want to make better decisions about light, composition and timing.
You apply it to a new assignment every day, and in the evening we look together at what your choices did to the picture. The method is the same in every city. Only the situations change.
- 01See
Slow down. Observe before you photograph.
- 02Choose
Decide what matters.
- 03Simplify
Remove what weakens the image.
- 04Work with intention
Make the decision — don't just react.
- 05Develop your language
Over time your pictures look like yours — not everybody else's.
SEEING
Look before you raise the camera. What do you notice — and what is just clutter?
FEELING
Decide what the picture is about: the light, the mood, or the person in front of you.
INTENTION & RHYTHM
Choose angle, distance and timing on purpose — instead of just reacting.
IDENTITY & MEANING
Notice what you keep doing. That is where your pictures start to look like yours.
Not a photo tour. A method.
An ordinary photo trip follows a simple pattern: a destination, good locations, an instructor, participants take pictures, the trip ends. We work differently.
Each day you are given a photographic assignment, you work it out in real environments, you select your images, and they are reviewed with Per and the group. That feedback becomes the starting point for the next assignment — the same principles applied to new situations, day after day.
The city changes. The method does not. That is why you can keep using it at home — on subjects of your own.
The method is constant. The city is the setting.
Per Valentin.
Per is a photographer and has spent decades helping photographers find their own voice in their images. The Lumina Method™ is his way of working, gathered and set down so that others can use it.
On a LUMINA Experience he is with you throughout: he sets the daily assignment, photographs alongside the group, challenges your choices and reviews your images in the evening — with concrete feedback on the work you are doing.
He is not here to teach you to photograph like him. He is here to help you discover how you see.
“My work is not to give you my pictures. My work is to help you find yours.”
Upcoming LUMINA Experiences.
Three cities, the same teaching: daily shooting, assignments, image review and feedback from Per. Max 12 participants per group.
Parma
This LUMINA Experience will not take place in November 2026.
Palermo
Hard Mediterranean light, dense streets and street life that does not wait for the photographer.
Bologna
Nine working days with the shifting light of the porticoes, the pace of the markets and the concentration of the workshops.
“I have begun to understand why I took the pictures I took. I photograph differently now.”
“After intensive guidance my view of composition and colour changed. I have never worked so consciously with my own expression.”
“I came to photograph a city. I travelled home with a method — and a series about myself.”
Method, experiences and practicalities.
Join the interest list
Hear about upcoming LUMINA Experiences, new destinations and photographic events with Per Valentin.
You will hear from us when there are dates, places or news from Per. Nothing else.
Registration
Choose your dates and city.
The teaching, the assignments and the feedback are the same in all three cities. What differs is the dates, the length and the environments you will be photographing in.
Max 12 participants per group