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Len Metcalf
Len is a photography educator and art teacher. He is the director of Len's School located in Sydney, Australia, which offers a wide range of online courses from year-long photography masterclasses to shorter composition and drawing courses. Len’s School offers innovative small group workshops and tours for dedicated amateur photographers who wish to grow.
Len publishes Len’s Journal which celebrates creative photography quarterly and is only available via subscription.
Len exhibits his photography regularly and is widely published. His intimate portraits of people and nature show a unique and very personal vision of the beauty of the world though his photographic art.
Leonard Murray Metcalf was born in Australia to parents with mixed heritage. Family folklore tell tales of ancestors such as a Scottish Sea Ferry Captain, an Indian Herbalist, a Reverend from Tatterford, a Chinese music teacher and possible Aboriginal lineage. His paternal grandparents hail from Newcastle on Tyne. It’s no surprise that Len’s work is sophisticated and worldly, attracting attention from an international audience.
Len began his obsession for landscape photography over 40 years ago when his father gifted him his first camera. Growing up in Australia’s spectacular Blue Mountains provided Len with an endless array of incredible scenes to capture. He particularly loves the light and mood of misty wet landscapes, abundant in that region.
Naturally, Len pursued a Bachelor of Visual Arts in Photography and graduated with straight distinctions, also receiving the coveted award for ‘Most Outstanding Advanced Colour Photographer’. However, education had also captured Len’s attention as he had been teaching Outdoor and Environmental Education to pay his way through University. This other passion coupled with a growing sense of disillusionment with the art world saw Len excel in education in the youth, government and corporate worlds for the next 20 years. He undertook a Graduate Diploma in Art Education and a Master’s Degree in Adult Education.
His reunion with photography occurred at the conclusion of a three-year lecturing tenure in the Middle East and he found that the love he had for photographing the natural world had flourished while he was otherwise engaged. Combining his flair for both education and photography made perfect sense and hence, Len’s School was created in 2000.
Len has become renowned as a leading photographic educator through teaching, mentoring and facilitating innovative workshops and tours around Australia. His exquisite photographs capture diverse Australian landscapes, from arid deserts and windswept coasts to his backyard in the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area. He ran his own gallery, has exhibited widely and writes for photography journals around the world.
Meeting of Minds conference 2016
Len's talk looked into his approaches to simplicity and the use of visual punctuation as a tool to create absorbing images. At the end of the video we include a short 'behind the scenes' interview about Len's work.