I thought it was about time to start entering some competitions (I say that in the plural, I’ve only managed to enter the one so far!) and after agreat trip to Scotland in May 2010 I came across the Scottish Nature Photography Awards and submitted a couple of images in the Landscape Photography catagory.

In January I had an email to say one of my photographs (Neist Point Light House below) had been shortlisted, how exciting!

Unfortunately I didn’t get placed but I have for the first time got my name in print HERE and the image alternating on their shortlisted page HERE

Looking at the weather forecast we were going to be in for a cold but interesting weekend. Alan had travelled down from South East London and Vicky from the other side of Hampshire to visit the stunning Dorset coastline on the Isle of Purbeck. We wanted to visit some iconic locations and also some locations where they could put their own creative mark on the landscape and master the art of using filters to create stunning images in camera without the need of lengthy processing.

Saturday morning was dull and overcast and we didn’t even notice the sun had risen as we photographed in Swanage, a great locations for simple and powerful compositions and great for the first outing with the filters. After breakfast we went on to a daytime location to practise composition more. Alan concerned at first with what confronted him quickly got to grips with the task in hand and we could hardly drag him away to head off for a cup of tea and a regroup before our final destination of the day Kimmeridge where we had a lovely muted sunset and both Alan and Vicky captured some great images! A successful first day.

On Sunday our first location was the iconic Corfe Castle, it has been dominating our hotel all weekend and we were keen to capture it in camera. The cloud was looking ominous but we were rewarded with some lovely pink and aqua hues which Alan and Vicky photographed beautifully with their filters.

We decided to give Durdle door a miss and instead headed back towards home stopping off at one of my favourite places in the New Forest for sunset. Unfortuantely there was no cloud but we finished the weekend with a great exercise on shutter speeds and playing with water effects and again Alan and Vicky captured some fantastic images.

A BIG thankyou from me to Alan and Vicky for making the weekend so much fun, we had some great opportunities with what the weather gave us and I look forward to wecoming both of them back to Dorset again soon!