Maxtone-Graham has a professional background of more than 20 years in commercial and narrative cinematography. As a guild cinematographer in both New York and Los Angeles, his works ranged from independent films, mainstream feature films, episodic television and advertising.

He first came to Vietnam in 1990 to shoot the feature documentary From Hollywood To Hanoi and returned a number of times in the decade following on other non-fiction and narrative films – among them the Sundance Film Festival award-winning feature Three Seasons – and for several personal projects as well.

In 2007-2008 he became a Fulbright Research Fellow, with a grant funding his proposal to photograph contemporary youth culture in Vietnam called State of Youth.  He has continued to live in Hanoi and published numerous photography portfolios in many magazines. He has shot commercial and other moving image projects, and produced an award-winning documentary.

The workshop will focus on real life shooting conditions and problem solving for filmmakers working on location. So, they will discuss lighting for interviews, creative framing and lighting, making the best of a bad location, and active and passive lighting techniques.