I had the pleasure of running the first Adventure Photography workshop at Glenmore Lodge at the end of Oct. This was something that myself and the team at the Lodge had talked about over 4 years ago and its taken a while to actually get around to organising it. I was really pleased that it was fully booked and also that the clients got so much from the course.
There so much great photography resources on line that you can definately learn a lot from your arm chair but there’s a lot to be said for getting out in the field and receiving instruction first hand and the group dynamic means there’s a lot of fun as well.
Everyone has heard about the rule of thirds and leading lines etc but was I was trying to convey in the course is the importance of feel, narrative and balance in an image, about layering and building depth that leads the viewer into an image and asking for more and how to construct a shoot for a client with a variety of image types. People often subconsciously , take the same image over and over again and its only when someone else sees your work and gives critique that you start to see things that perhaps you hadn’t done before. What we were trying to do on the course was change perspective, i.e. view a subject from a different position/angle and use the natural landscape , the sky , the light and the colours to create images that , hopefully stand out from the crowd .
I’ve been really lucky to have become ambassadors for Elinchrom and Fstop gear , both of which we were using on the course . The ability to use HySync with the Quadra flash system is a part of the tools that I use to get the images I want to get and on the course all the students were using the new HySync triggers and seeing for themselves how much it can add to an image.
Our athlete was Georgina, one of the Lodge instructors and a strong climber, runner, biker , skier etc. basically , anything we wanted her to do in the terrain , she could do which is perfect for this type of course. With Scottish weather , you never know what you’re going to get but we were blessed with amazing Autumnal sunshine though it could easily have also been wall to wall rain , but of course we had a plan for that ; ) .
We played around with various flash techniques , such as panning and second curtain sync which was new for some of the students . Its a hit or miss technique but done well , can add drama to a shot and a bit of variety to a shoot selection .
The course was a lot of fun , we all leant some new stuff, had a laugh , bit of friendly banter between the Canon and Nikon camps ( To Nikon user, ” is your camera not working,.. again ” : )
Dates for next years course are set so if you’re keen to get your photography up to the next level , sign up and I’ll see you there
Thanks for reading