On a recent afternoon, photographer Alison Shaw sat down with a student.

The meeting took place in her namesake gallery, a small blue building on Dukes County avenue in Oak Bluffs. Ms. Shaw pulled up a photograph on her computer screen and began playing with the coloration.

Jean Schnell made a photographic study of the old marine hospital.

Jean Schnell

Jean Schnell made a photographic study of the old marine hospital.

Jean Schnell

The student, Kate Griswold, was not on the Vineyard for the meeting. She called in from her home in South Carolina using a web-based platform that allows video conferencing and screen sharing.

That’s how most of the teaching occurs in Ms. Shaw’s advanced mentorship program, a nine-month seminar she teaches along with her wife and business partner Sue Dawson.

“It’s very fluid, like being in the same room with them,” Ms. Shaw said. “I think it’s as good or even better than meeting with people in person.”

This month, students in the program will display their recent work at the Alison Shaw Gallery, beginning with an opening reception on Sunday. It will mark the first show at the gallery that does not feature Ms. Shaw’s photography.

Instead, it will showcase Ms. Shaw and Ms. Dawson’s teaching skills.

It’s a new area of collaboration for the couple, who opened the Alison Shaw Gallery together in 2006.

In the gallery, Ms. Shaw provides the artistic talent and Ms. Dawson the vision, they said in a joint interview. In the context of the advanced mentorship, they’ve transferred their complementary skill sets to teaching.

Photo by Gwen Norton, one of nine students participating in mentorship program.

Gwen Norton

Photo by Gwen Norton, one of nine students participating in mentorship program.

Gwen Norton

Ms. Shaw helps students with issues of technique, style and focus.

Meanwhile, Ms. Dawson, who handles design and promotion for the gallery, helps students package and market their work, drafting artist statements, and setting prices for their prints.

“We are both putting our best foot forward,” Ms. Shaw said.

The mentorship consists of seven hours of individual coaching, a two-day retreat and the group show, which itself is a major learning experience for students, the teachers said.

“We are trying to be a complete support system for these mentorship students,” Ms. Shaw said.

For the most part, the students are middle aged and avid photographers, eager to improve their exposure. All have learned with Ms. Shaw in the past by taking her well-known photography workshops.

The mentorship programs were created with them in mind — it was an effort to cater to Ms. Shaw’s followers — photographers so loyal that they had taken up to 10 workshops with her.

“The mentorship is kind of a next step,” Ms. Shaw said.

For many of the participants, this weekend marks their first true gallery show.

That’s the case for Jean Schnell, a retired nurse from Southborough who has pursued photography as a serious hobby since 2005. Like the rest of her cohort, Ms. Schnell participated in another Shaw Gallery mentorship program a year and a half ago.

When that program ended, a majority of the students clamored for more, so the gallery created the advanced track.

Over the course of the two programs, Ms. Schnell said she has found her photographic identity.

“I only had an inkling of what my style was before, but by working with her and trying some things, I feel like I have developed my own style,” she said of Ms. Shaw. “She has helped me develop that and an artistic vision as well.”

That vision took her to the old marine hospital in Vineyard Haven this past year, a stately late 19th-century building that overlooks the Lagoon Pond and is planned as the future home for the Martha’s Vineyard Museum.

Ms. Schnell will display the images she captured there during a daylong visit: haunting exteriors and empty, derelict interiors.

As a result of the mentorship, Ms. Schnell now has a website where she posts her latest work and blogs about her subjects.

Ms. Griswold, the student from South Carolina, describes herself as a “lifelong subscriber” to the gallery’s programs.

Right now, her preferred subjects are animals — birds, dogs and horses.

She’s working on a series of wild horse portraits taken on Cumberland Island off the coast of Georgia. When she first signed up for a Shaw workshop, her photography career had come to a halt.

Years later, she feels rejuvenated.

“I think it’s always really helpful to be around other creative people when you are trying to develop new skills and new thoughts,” she said.

View a photo gallery of artwork from the show.

The opening reception for the advanced mentorship show is Sunday, May 3, from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Alison Shaw Gallery, 88 Dukes County avenue in Oak Bluffs. Students displaying work in the show are Gwen Norton, Jean Schnell, Karla Bernstein, Doug Burke, Estelle Disch, David Matthews, Diane Collins, Kate Griswold and Steven Koppel. The show runs through May 22.