See Life Through the Lens’ sister company Helen Rushton Photography offer contemporary & stylish Wedding Photography and beautiful Boudoir Photoshoots from the Studio in Romsey, Hampshire. Today’s great deal could be the gift you give that is remembered forever!

Never let it be said that Photography courses are full of techno geeks droning on about how much better their camera is compared to the lesser spotted Nikon from the safety of a classroom! A See Life Through The Lens Landscape Photography Course can, quite literally, make the biggest splash in your understanding of photography and how to get the best out of your camera as Penny and Vicky found out down in Portland last weekend!

I have met both Vicky and Penny before on different See Life courses and was looking forward to a weekend of great locations with these two very keen and accomplished photographers. The thing about getting amazing landscape images is you can’t do it from the safety of your armchair and if the conditions aren’t great all the more reason to get out and find a location that suits the weather and capture the drama. After photographing Portland Bill on our first dawn shoot both Vicky and Penny were keen to return the following morning to shoot more of this amazing coastline. As I try and work around the participants’ requests where ever possible, I was delighted to be going back to one of my favourite locations twice on one trip!

On our first morning at Portland we had a howling wind to contend with along with a lovely sky and although the wind had dropped on our second shoot here we were faced with immense crashing waves that had been stirred up by the previous day’s South Easterly winds. The sky was again fantastic and this time we concentrated on capturing the amazing water movement and communicating how wild the conditions were… Unfortuantely both Vicky and I found out first hand about the wild conditions, this is a shot Penny managed to capture of Vicky with one of the huge waves sneaking up on her!

Thanks for letting me share the image ladies and thank goodness no one captured the moment I got swamped whilst checking out another great composition from where we were based – all credit to Penny, despite the soaking I got she was still up for using the spot and captured a great image of Portland Bill. This is my version of the Bill bathed in golden light.

In stark contrast we had a couple of very calm dusk shoots in and around Portland where we were concentrating on black and white images and bringing out feelings of calm and peace, and during the day we not only visited zombie beach, covered in seaweed that felt like dead bodies *shudder* where we spent our time understanding and practising using 10 stop filters to make a variety of images but we also spent some time around the historic quay concentrating on composition and seeing images in the photo challenge I set them both. To see some of Penny and Vicky’s images, please visit the CLIENT GALLERY and to hear what they had to say on the weekend please visit the TESTIMONIALS page.

Two of my other favourite images from the weekend

To find out more about a See Life Through The Lens Landscape Photography Workshop please give me a call on 07866 440740 or 01794 516821… Remember to bring your waterproofs!

I was after something new last week and set myself a challenge to find and photograph something out of the ordinary in the ordinary environment. I wanted to see if I could photograph parts of the town that could be interpreted as letters without actually photographing letters and so I headed towards the Western Esplanade in Southampton, somewhere I have never really looked around despite living in nearby Romsey for a number of years, to begin my challenge.

Immediately plenty of “I”s popped out at me, signposts, bollards and obvious straight lines but I wanted to be more creative and as I walked around I started to see letters everywhere! Some more obvious that others like the S shape of metal that had been hammered into a post and the letter J in a simple bend of a drainpipe. After only a couple of hours I had almost collected the whole alphabet apart from the elusive letter “Z”… If you know of a Z in the environment please let me know by emailing me helen@seelifethroughthelens.com so I can add it to my collection, until then I will be out and about looking for it myself!!

As I am so pleased with my results I decided to offer them to you as personalised gifts including your name in a frame, keyrings and greetings cards. For more information please visit my SPECIALS Page. For a sample of your name or the name of a loved one please drop me an email to helen@seelifethroughthelens.com

I have been lucky enough to have some great opportunities to take stunning landscape images across Dorset, Hampshire and the South on England whilst researching for my Landscape Photography Workshops and wanted to put together a calendar for 2012 to share some of those locations with you!

The calendar is printed on high quality lustre paper giving a lovely glare-free finish on the photos and each month has an A4 sized calendar where you can diarise your commitments for the year. Priced at only £9.99 they are available to purchase online through Paypal or by telephoning Helen on 01794 516821 to purchase by credit card. I will also be selling the Calendars at our first prestigious craft fair at BROADLANDS in Romsey on the 29th and 30th October 2011 along with limited edition prints – perfect timing for Christmas presents!

On Thursday 6th October Penny came down to join me in Dorset for a one to one landscape photography workshop – Penny has been shooting for many years and was keen to improve her understanding of using filters to balance exposure and learn how to get “WOW!” shots when she goes out on location.

We met at Hengistbury Head, one of my favourite locations in the area as it’s diversity really means there is a location for every single season and weather condition and, as we were to find out, we used many of them all in one day due to the amazingly varying conditions throughout the day! Penny quickly mastered the use of filters and the understanding of how to create emotion and mood in her photos using a couple of the locations I love so we headed off further up the coast for our sunset shoot.

I’ve recently added another location to my portfolio and Penny was keen to check it out despite the need to battle the wind and a long walk and we were rewarded by some great light and as a result some great images, here are a couple of Penny’s favourite shots from the day

For more information on See Life Through The Lens’ one to one workshops and group courses please contact Helen on 07866 440740 or 01794 516821 or by emailing helen@seelifethroughthelens.com

Last weekend keen photographers Jo-An from Halifax and Darren from Poole came down to the Isle of Purbeck for a Landscape Photography workshop. They couldn’t have chosen a better weekend for their workshop with temperatures being recorded around the area at 24 degrees – unfortunately this also brought the world and his wife down to the coast so it was important to constantly evaluate the weather and decide where the best photo opportunities were going to be.

We were rewarded with a lovely clear pink sunrise down in Swanage where Jo-An and Darren quickly got to grips with their ND filters on our first dawn shoot and were finding some fantastic compositions down on Swanage pier later in the day. Introducing them to 10 stop filters down in Kimmeridge around sunset they again were treated to some fantastic light.

Sunday morning and we beat the crowds to the best location to shoot Corfe Castle and photographed the fantastic misty morning, anyone not there 3o minutes before sunrise missed the best of the dawn! After photographing some fantastic autumn colour in Wareham we headed off to Durdle Door for our last sunset shoot managing to photograph the arch from 2 different locations according to the weather.

A great weekend with lots of laughs and returning to the computer this morning, I received an email from Darren saying “I would like to reiterate my thanks for the course as you made me feel at ease, and I learned more than I expected. I was worried that the course might be too technical for me, but you pitch your courses to suit the individuals – your website doesn’t lie!” A great ending to a great Landscape Photography Course! Thanks Jo-An and Darren, I look forward to seeing your photos.

A couple of my images from the weekend…

As a Professional Photographer who runs Landscape Photography workshops centred around the use of filters to get the image right in camera I have been getting more and more frustrated with the waiting list for Lee Filters my customers are experiencing so decided to do some digging around the internet to see what alternatives people are recommending.

It now seems common knowledge that Cokin’s “ND” filters give a strong magenta colour cast when layering up the filters, what I was surprised at was that Hitech still seem to be getting good reviews with regards to colour cast. Having moved from Hitech to Lee Filters over 3 years ago I was surprised people are still offering them as a viable alternative to Cokin filters – perhaps I just have a bad set? A series of thumbnails taken yesterday down on a South Coast beach shows immediately how bad my Hitech filters are…

There must be an alternative to Lee Filters, not just cost wise but also the problem with the 6month + waiting list we seem to be currently facing?

I recently had a customer come down to Dorset for a One to One workshop and he bought with him some filters I hadn’t yet seen, although he couldn’t remember the name of them he told me the cost and where he got them from so after seeing his results and lack of colour cast off I went to investigate exactly what and how good these filters are. I found what I think were his filters, Kood are offering packs of 2 “Grey Gradient” filters for £19.99 and 2 “Neutral Density” filters for £19.99 also, certainly you can’t argue with the price… but are they any good?

First look at the Kood filters showed that they were a little blue when compared to the Hitech and Lee filters, although it was hard to get a direct comparison due to Kood supplying their filters in x2 and x4 rather than Lee and Hitech working in 0.3, 0.6 and 0.9. This got a little confusing as the company selling the Koods that I purchased through were advertising the x2 as a one stop filter and the x4 a 2 stop whereas Lee and Hitech say their 0.3 is a One stop and their 0.6 a 2 stop which, in my experience, is very accurate– more on that later.

But photographing filters against a white background isn’t going to tell me how they perform, I needed to get out to a location where I could put them to the test so off I went down to a couple of locations in West Dorset I am using in my new 2012 West Dorset Workshop.

The first location I chose was specifically chosen for its’ simplicity to show the filters in their best light. The beach down at Seatown has beautifully golden pebbles and miles of shoreline where the waves are usually sufficient to give good fluffy water effects. I was shooting about 5pm (a couple of hours before sunset expecting no sunset colour in the sky which could skew the results) so I knew I would be able to get about 1-2 seconds shutter speed with the Lees and the Hitechs and used a 2 stop grad plus a 2 stop and 3 stop ND filter to give me the time I wanted and to show the extent of how my Hitech filters colour cast when layering up the filters… These are the results of the first shot:

Lee Filters                                                    Hitech Filters                                               Kood Filters

Wow well what a surprise! I couldn’t get the slow water I wanted with the Koods and even using the “Dark Grey Gradient GG2” filter (which should be a 2 stop) the sky wasn’t as well exposed as the Hitech and Lees (when using 0.6 grads) were showing, BUT, VERY LITTLE colour cast  from the Koods when using 3 filters (the GG2 + ND2 + ND4) and the colour cast was only very slightly blue, certainly nowhere near as offensive as the magenta Hitechs!

Onto another location to run the comparison again, this time the cloud was a little lighter but I stuck with the same combination of filters as the sky was still showing 2 stops difference from the foreground so on the Hitechs and Lee Filters I was using a 0.6 + 0.9 ND + 0.6 ND Grad and on the Koods the ND2+ND4+GG2 grad so again trying to push the colour casts you can get when layering up the filters.

Here are the results and again you can see the magenta tint of the Hitechs compared to the beautiful colour the Lee filters give you and the very slight blue tint from the Koods.

Lee Filters                                                     Hitech Filters                                             Kood Filters

About 30 minutes before sunset now and I am hoping I can really slow down the shutter however as always the clouds and sky have a different idea and the sun peeped out between some heavy cloud stopping me from slowing everything down as much as I wanted, however again you can see the difference in colour cast – I’ve added in a Lee 10stop (or Big Stopper) shot into this series, can you see my Big Stopper gives a blue colour cast? I was lucky enough to get one of the early production models and apparently this colour tint has now been corrected.

Lee Filters – Big Stopper                                                           Lee Filters

Hitech Filters                                                                             Kood Filters

And finally, the sun has set… The Lee filters are coping well, (although a little under exposed using the same set up as before which I wanted to do so the filters remained constant throughout the comparison and every time I got the sea exposed correctly the sun was too bright – needed a 3 stop but it isn’t about great images – is it?!) The Koods are still doing well although getting frustrated I get can’t more water movement with the combination I have, the Hitechs that allegedly “don’t colour cast” well…

Lee Filters

Hitech Filters                                                                             Kood Filters

So in conclusion, this hasn’t been written to sing the praises of Lee Filters, we all know how good they are but with the high cost and slow availability issue they are currently facing I wanted to see if there is a more cost effective alternative that produces similar results. The answer I think is YES – the Koods certainly gave some great results compared to the Hitechs and I am now going to find if I can get some darker Kood filters so they can produce the same results I am used to from using my Lee Filters. Well done KOOD!

 ****PLEASE NOTE – none of the images have been edited and are the RAW file re-saved as a JPG for size****

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me, Helen Rushton on helen@seelifethroughthelens.com. I run Landscape Photography Workshops in Hampshire and Dorset all based around getting the image right in camera with the use of filters. Please feel free to leave your comments