Heavy Weather
A practical days workshop learning to gain control over your camera, shutter speeds, aperture, ISO, flash etc, setting it up for optimum quality under any given lighting, and making better pictures through composition. Numbers limited to a hand-full.
Saturday 25th February in Barnstaple
Thursday 1st March in South Molton
Thursday 8th March in Bideford
A ‘sit around the table’ workshop to get to know your camera better. You’ll learn about shutter speeds, aperture, ISO, flash and setting your camera up for optimum quality.
Wednesday 14th March in Barnstaple
An evening workshop celebrating the dark nights of the Winter. You’ll learn how to make ‘long exposure’ photographs using coloured lights, flames, sparklers and hand-held flash.
I have a wealth of knowledge and experience of photographing 2D artwork, jewellery and ceramics and I’m willing to pass this on to artists eager to improve their own image making camera skills. Although this workshop is for a small group (max 5) I also offer it on a 1:1 basis for ? a day for the same price.
Opening an image file and adjusting levels, contrast, brightness and colour balance. Rotating, resizing and cropping an image. Placing an image or images into a new file. Using layers and history. Participants will need to be computer literate i.e. use a computer on regular basis and understand the basic controls. Small group (max 4).
Using tools, masks and filters to manipulate your image. Tools used in this session are: marquee, move, lasso, magic wand, eraser, paint bucket, eyedropper, hand and zoom. Making a contact sheet and using batch production. Adding type to your image. Participants will need to be computer literate i.e. use a computer on regular basis and understand the basic controls. Small group (max 4).
1 day Workshop: Learning to Look – Theory and Practice
10 week Evening Class: Introduction to Digital Photography
The Stone Hole
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The Stone Hole, Woodhouse Eves, Leicstershire |
Over the Christmas break I visited my family in Leicestershire, where I spent the first 20+ years of my life. I love the countryside there. Charnwood Forest is an area where granite sits proudly in outcrops on the surface and there are always plenty of native deciduous trees. There’s also lots of hiking opportunities and this snap* was from one of those on Boxing Day.
This cave is a place I know from my childhood. And it’s a place my dad knew well as his school and the church where he was a choir boy was minutes away from it. What kind of influence might a place like this have had on my young mind? Looking at it now I was surprised to see such familiar colours from the slate greys to the orange tinge from iron deposits. The shape was also very familiar and this is probably because ‘The Stone Hole’ was once a mine, and is very similar to ones I have explored at Combe Martin at home in North Devon.
This early 1900’s image was found whilst I was trying to find the name of this cave. I was stuck by the fact that it was a commercially available postcard and that there is a group of well dressed people in it. I sometimes feel I was born 100 years too late! I’ve seen similar Victorian pictures of landscape where people are picnicking, studying, rockpooling and enjoying for it’s wildness whereas now those same places are our toilets and rubbish tips.
*for my fine-art images I would take considerable time, use a tripod, shoot sometimes over 100 photographs, spend hours (possibly days) processing the frames and constructing the image to my memory of the place. This really was a snap-shot with compromises on camera support, iso, aperture etc.