The greatest single qualitative leap a photographer can make is learning the keys to good composition.

It’s not the camera or the lens or costly accessories, it’s not whether you prefer film or digital - it’s how you approach the frame and how you go about populating it. Where’s the subject? Do you center or skew? Where’s the horizon line? What’s in the foreground? What’s a frame within a frame? Do you go for a vast overview or the telling detail? How do you make use of environmental elements to lead the eye where you want it to focus? How do you approach abstracts and minimalism? What is storytelling?

The rules of composition are easily identified and just as easily learned, yet most photographers use intuition, a hunch, rather than tried-and-true compositional techniques. In just 3 classes, with hundreds of photos to examine – and a portfolio review in the final class – you’ll come out with a whole new aesthetic for your photography.

Up the Down Escalator by Portland photographer, Gabriel Francis, is an invitation to slow down, look closer, and reconsider what we define as beautiful. It asks viewers to recognize themselves in others, and to acknowledge struggle not as something to be hidden, but as something that connects us all.

The images focus on moments and individuals often overlooked or dismissed. Francis is drawn to struggle and resilience, to the contrast between hardship and the strength people carry through it. Emotional, mental, physical, financial, and spiritual challenges are treated not as spectacle, but as shared human realities, approached with care, dignity, and respect.

Tonight’s reception will include a live musical performance by the band Growing Pains.

Up the Down Escalator will be on view in our gallery space through the end of January.