North Berwick tidal pool

This image was made yesterday during a brief visit to North Berwick. I've been trying to capture this picture for ages and finally got the combination of my availability, weather, light and tide all together at one point. I waited three hours on the beach and this was the very last exposure I made. It was taken on a Nikon D700 with a 50mm F1.8 lens. 4 minutes at f11 with Lee 0.6 ND Hard Grad and Lee Big Stopper. The structure is a children's paddling pool which in itself is not of any photographic significance. However the tight composition serves to remove most extraneous detail and the long exposure reduces the detail in the water to a flat shape. The result is simplified to the geometric shapes. The icing on the cake is of course the Bass Rock in the far distance. This is a fantastic part of Scotland for coastal photography. This location was first brought to me by Colin Homes, the Edinburgh based landscape photographer.

Workshop impact

They say the proof of the pudding is in the eating and I suppose the saying holds true. I enjoyed my time with Colin Homes enormously and would recomend it without hesitation. However in good management speak, what has been the impact and what did I learn?

Some aspects were reassuring in terms of my existing practice and my general camera craft stood up reasonably well. I've not long been using the Lee Big Stopper so some aspects of handling that were brushed up. The first part that Colin addressed with us was exposure. This came as a bit of a surprise as I'm reasonably adept at getting well exposed images with a  good range of tones. However whether it is due to growing up with colour transparency film or not I have  always feared over exposure. Colin pushed us to get our histogram as far to the right as possible I've seen this expressed as ETTR (Exposure to the right). I've never worked that way in the past but seeing files produced have converted. He also taught me to make use of RAW files. I've never been that bothered but working in RAW was a revelation. The final part of the technique slot was given to using Photoshop CS5. I've never gone beyond Elements before but now it has converted me completely.

Lessons learned.

I took the plunge a couple of weeks ago and signed up for a Coastal Landscape photography course. There is an enormous industry out there of people offering to take your photography to a new level and in many cases with not that much to demonstrate that their photography is at any special level. I've always viewed such offerings with a degree of skepticism. Out of the blue, when visiting the delightful seaside town of North Berwick, I was literally stopped dead in my tracks while passing the local art shop. In the window was a huge framed print of the image to the left. I just stood and stared. It was a Sunday and the shop was shut so i did what anyone would do, photographed it on the iPhone and took a note of his name to investigate further. The photographer is Colin Homes and when I discovered that he was running courses, I was hooked. Here was someone taking images I'd kill to have taken and ready and willing to show me how. The booking was made and I duely spent a fantastic day with him a couple of weeks ago.

The day began with an overview of his workflow, a little on photoshop and an insight into creating the best possible file from which to work. After that we headed off, just two of us on the course that day, to the coast not half an hour's walk from the town. The next four hours or so were spent taking photographs with exactly the right balance of guidance from Colin. Never pushy, never intrusive, just there when required. The input for me was balance between a little technique and a greater part of compositional suggestion. We're all different, but for me it was spot on.

We returned in time to base to have a look at our output and for each of us one file recived the Colin treatment using Photoshop CS5. Colin took us through the inital RAW import and manipulation then a whistlestop tour of using layer masks, particularly the use of multiple gradient masks. This gave each one of us a final file demonstrating all the taught elements.

This process illustrated a number of important points in the teaching and learning process. The teacher must for me have credibility, they must be able to pass on their knowledge ina  way that enables me to learn and finally I need to enjoy the process. I had a superb day, thoroughly enjoyed myself and learned loads into the bargain. Almost more importantly, I have continued to learn from the day and  my own process has changed forever. Can't wish for more than that

Eastern shores

Just back from a brief visit to North Berwick. I'd gone to visit some local beaches and with a picture of the tidal pool in mind. In my defence the tide was against me and the image I made was ok'ish. However I was brought up very short when I happened to look in the window of the art shop on the high street. I was stopped in my tracks by one of the most remarkable pictures I have ever seen. They are the ones that fall some way between inspiring and making me want to throw it all out and take up stamp collecting. The photograph was by Colin I Homes. I just stood and stared and wished it had been mine. On searching for his work I came across his website  and discovered a huge body of marvellous images. I also discovered that he runs courses and am currently investigating.