On Friday 24th June I met with Gavin, Mike and Gregory at their lovely B&B Bure Lodge in Christchurch to begin their landscape photography weekend workshop. All three chaps were keen to improve their composition and understand more about the use of filters to create effects like slowing down water, cloud movement and balancing exposures.

Being only 3 days after the summer solstice, we were up bright and early and on location at 4.20am to shoot dawn focussing on our composition after a great breakfast we headed out to nearby Christchurch to learn more about using filters to slow down water and then headed out into the New Forest for a lovely calm sunset shoot with everyone getting great images with some lovely water effects. Rising on Sunday we were greeted with a fantastic foggy dawn giving us a really ethereal feel to the images we were taking and having mastered their composition and the use of filters. After breakfast we ran through some editing techniques on how to make our images pop and out to deepest darkest Dorset for a great daytime shoot finishing off back where we began with a sunset shoot near Christchurch, Dorset.

We had a fantastic weekend with lots of banter and some great images and already I’ve had some great comments from Mike:

“I just thought I would write a quick email to let you know how much I enjoyed the weekend. I learned so much, and you have given me the confidence to use my camera in manual and look at things in a different way – I can’t stop looking for shapes and framing everything now! Thanks again for letting me borrow your tripod and filters, I now realise I need to do a bit of shopping.

I am so pleased with the photos from Saturday night, slowing down the water down was exactly what I wanted to learn how to do, and you showed me how to do it, yippy!

I would just like to thank you for your time, patience, skill and above all your friendship. You made the course fun”

And from Gavin:

“I just wanted to send you a big thank you for the photography workshop this weekend. Not only did I have a great time (sleep deprivation serves to make the days last longer; which is great at my age) but I learned loads. It is absolutely true to say that after just a couple of days I see things in a very different way and see opportunities for great photography where previously I would have ignored. It’s re-ignited my appetite to take great pictures

You’re a great coach and I look forward to teaming up with you again, hopefully in a workshop later in the year. I can’t wait to have a proper look at my pictures but alas won’t be until the weekend”

Here are a couple of images of the chaps hard at work

…Sleeping on the job – it wasn’t THAT early a start??!!

And the misty mysterious Dawn on Sunday

See Life Through The Lens have teamed up with Digital Photographer magazine to offer a FREE One to One Landscape Photography course for one of their lucky readers – if you’re not reading DP why not register online now and do so?

You can find all the details on their website by clicking here

Enter for your chance to improve your landscape photography skills by creating stunning images in camera

On Friday I had the pleasure of working with Eddie, a keen photographer who was looking to get more out of his Canon G10 camera. Eddie wanted to concentrate on getting the image right in camera through composition and learning to control the manual settings, so after going through some composition rules, critiquing images and running through the theory of shooting in manual, out we headed down to the Beach huts at Hengistbury Head to try out the theory.

With fantastic moody skies Eddie and his G10 were quickly capturing great balanced photos, picking up the theory and putting it into practise in minutes!

The moody skies quickly turned to rain as we headed back to get a bite to eat and make out plans for sunset and the rain only got heavier through our meal… What should we do?

I recommended we change our sunset shoot location to somewhere close to the car so we could wait out the rain and hopefully get a chance to finish off the course and lucky for us as soon as we arrived at our changed location the rain stopped and we headed down to the shore for a fantastic evening shoot.

After the course Eddie sent me an email about his day saying; “Whilst the Plan was to spend time (and we did) to get the best result from the Camera requiring minimum editing, I still took 50 plus pictures. From my viewpoint, it was a good day I felt I had learnt a lot and have the confidence to use Manual when it is the best way for me to get the result I am looking for.” Eddie Collins

Eddie has also kindly sent me one of his favourite photographs from the course, taken in Manual on a Canon G10. I think you will agree it’s beautiful?!

To find out more information on how to get the most out of your compact or digital SLR camera why not telephone See Life Through The Lens on 07866 440740 or 01794 516821

It’s been far too long since the last See Life newsletter but hopefully worth the wait with a new style letter giving updates on recent courses, Hugyfot products, my underwater photography exploits and of course up and coming workshops on offer. In the Summer newsletter there is some exciting news from See Life so if you would like to subscribe please click HERE

Alan and Nigel joined me for a weekend’s landscape photography down in Portland, Dorset where we visited Portland Bill, Pulpit Rocks and Chesil Beach to learn more about creating stunning landscape images in camera. It was Nigel’s first time shooting in manual and using filters and he picked up the principles within 2 shoots, nice one Nigel! Alan had previously been on an Isle of Purbeck Landscape Photography Workshop with me and wanted to use his skills on photographing the stunning Portland Coastline, quickly putting his knowledge into practise Alan got some great moody images from the workshop!

See Life through The Lens’ photography workshops are based around getting the image right in camera with minimal post processing on the computer, since the weather turned dire on the Bank Holiday Monday (normal for the UK!) after a great misty morning shoot in Weymouth we critiqued some images taken over the weekend and the covered the developing techniques I use when processing images.

We had a thoroughly great time, from getting soaked by the sea spray down at pulpit rocks to brilliant blue sunshine photographing the inner landscape at Nothe Fort! Thanks chaps for a great couple of days and hope to see you both again soon.