Landscape & Nature Photography Workshops & PhotoTalks
‘Learning by doing’ is the key to every endeavour.
Perfect your field techniques and on-screen processing by joining a workshop.
Getting out, into the field with on-the-spot coaching, is the quickest way to improve your photography. Processing those images on-screen, the same day, will reinforce and build on that learning.
We'll work together on seeing photographs and composition; creating compelling landscapes, natural still life and close-up photography; working on and off a tripod; critical exposure decisions – and anything else that crops up. Post-capture processing tutorials revolve around Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and include importing photographs, photo database management, developing options for colour and black-and-white and making custom prints.
Small Group Workshops are designed for 4 to 12 people to suit the needs of your group. We can work on a number of different styles of nature and outdoor photography in a location or locations of your or my choosing. Each workshop is tailored to the location and can include landscape techniques, nature and close-up photography, winter photography of waterfalls, 'seeing' photographs, assembling the elements of composition, etc. in an effort to stretch your photography into new areas of seeing and creating. We can even make it a Field & Screen day by combine a morning of photographing followed by an afternoon of processing on-screen.
The base cost is $500 for a half-day and $750 for a full day. Lunch can be catered for the group and added to the base cost or purchased individually, depending on where we are based. There may be an additional cost for an indoor afternoon session of processing. Note: more than 12 can be accommodated, but it changes the nature of the workshop and decreases the individual time spent with each photographer.
One-to-One Workshops can be scheduled for half-days (four hours) or full days (eight hours) and can be a field workshop or post-capture processing tutorial. You can choose the location or you can leave that up to me, depending on the type of photography you wish to do. One favourite combination is spending the morning in the field followed by an afternoon processing images on screen..
One-to-One workshops can be for yourself or for you and up to 2 friends. For individuals, the cost is $300 for a half-day and $500 for a full day - with you buying lunch! For each additional person (up to 3), there will be an extra $60 charge for a half-day and $85 for a full day. There may be an additional cost for an afternoon of processing as we would be working indoors.
Portfolio Reviews are a chance for you and I to sit down together and discuss a selection of your photographs. I will provide constructive feedback to help you improve your overall approach to photography, photography techniques and composition as well as discussions about individual photographs you would like to further improve. Again. both field and post-capture processing techniques, including printing, can be part of the review. Portfolio Reviews begin with you sending me a digital collection of images. Once I've had a chance to review them, we get together for about 2 hours to discuss your work. The cost for a Portfolio Review is $150.
Evening Photo Talks are popular with photography clubs across southern Ontario. Topics include:
NEW! Field & Screen – The Art of Photography: The primary act of photography occurs in the field where we assemble the elements of a scene—light and shadow, shape, perspective and angle—into our composition, turning a three-dimensional scene into a two-dimensional image file. But what then? How can we breathe life back into those pixels to recreate the experience of 'being there'? In this presentation, I will walk you through a series of photographs, showing the process of visualising, seeing, then creating, all while staying true to the principles of #RealWorldPhotography.
NEW! #RealWorldPhotography – Pure & Natural: In these days of Assistive and Generative AI, is there still room for photography as it was originally intended? Of course there is—and we will explore just how to remain true to the medium.
Beautiful Black & White: In this age of instant, vibrant colours, why is black-and-white still so engaging? Some would have you think it's as easy as pushing the BW button or desaturating the colours, but there is a whole world of considerations and techniques. Discover the beauty of B&W photography and, more importantly, how to see and create in this most limiting of media.
Creating Compelling Landscapes: Be inspired and learn how to create landscapes in colour and black-and-white that draw viewers into a scene and invite them to linger and have a look around.
My Own Backyard: We can't always be travelling and staycations are a thing now. Find inspiration in the places close to home. From your back yard to the '100-mile' photograph, capturing photographs of the places most accessible to us and the ones we know best is always a thrill.
Travel Photography from Akureyri to Zanzibar: You are in a ‘once in a lifetime’ location, enjoying ‘once in a lifetime’ experiences. How do you capture the ‘essence of place’ when you might have only an hour or a day, when even a week is often not long enough, and the weather is not co-operating? These are the challenges we face as photographers when travelling!
NEW! iPhoneography / Phone Photography: What? A phone camera? Are yo serious? In this era of bigger is better, ‘the best camera is (still) the one that’s with you’. Learn how to get the most out of that diminutive sensor.
Editing Techniques using Adobe Lightroom and LrC: Each of these PhotoTalks can be run as presentations or as hands-on mini-workshops.
The Basics of Lightroom: Lightroom may be ‘industry-standard’ but how can you get the most out of what can be an overwhelming app? Learn the five fundamentals that will take your raw files from zero to 100.
The Ins and Outs of Lightroom in Colour: Lr offers an number of features to optimize and tweak colours to make
The Black-and White of Lightroom: It’s so easy to look beyond Lightroom for black-and-white, but even Lr has a number of tools available to
Shaping the Light using Lightroom: Once the basics of Lr have been mastered, there are still a number of tools available to raise the bar, to add depth and movement including Masks..
Evening Photo Talks are typically up to 2 hours in length and are $150. Please note - all prices are exclusive of travel outside the Guelph-K-W-Cambridge area.
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