Photography student’s success
May 27, 2008 by Philip
Filed under Philip Dunn's PhotoActive Blog
Photograph by Margaret Laurie
It’s always a huge pleasure for me when I hear that I have been able to inspire someone and set them on the right track.
Margaret came to one of my weekend workshops here in Kirkcudbright in SW Scotland earlier this year. The other day she emailed me hardly able to contain here excitement because one of her photographs had been accepted for publication in the Scotland on Sunday newspaper. This is what Margaret said:
“You helped a lot to inspire me to take more photos, and give me some confidence to send my photos into the paper.
“This photo was taken a couple of Fridays ago at the beginning of May. We live in Ferryhill, Aberdeen and I’d woken early with the sun streaming in through the window, and out of the window saw this fantastic sunrise. I went across the road and that was the view from our street at 5.30am! I took loads of photos while my husband, and daughters were tucked up snugly in bed. The view looks over the rooftops towards the River Dee as it flows under Victoria Road bridge to the harbour then out to sea. The smoke on the right is from an offshore supply vessel. The cranes are all at the docks and the tiny dots are notorious Aberdeen seagulls! I loved the way the cranes and the aerials were leaning towards each other.
“My camera is a Nikon D80, exposure set on manual at 1/1600sec, f7.1, ISO 200, WB set on ‘Cloudy’. The focal length was 112mm.
“The weekend workshop in Kirkcudbright with yourself gave me the oomph to do something with my photos. As you can see I now use my camera in manual, and that’s pretty much 99% of the time, and experiment with the white balance, and still take B & W.”
Very well done, Margaret. You have every right to be very proud of yourself. I can still remember the buzz I got from my first publication – and that’s a very long time ago.
Might I have done things differently? Well, perhaps I might have used a slightly different exposure setting, but Margaret has achieved such a beautiful result that any alterations would only amount to fine tweaking.
By using the ‘Cloudy’ White Balance (WB) setting, Margaret has added to the yellow/orange glow from the early morning sun. Great idea. With so much light available, I might have used a ISO 100 for maximum image quality, stopped the aperture down for extra depth of field (this part depends on what Margaret was wanting to capture; maybe she wanted limited depth of field), and used a slower shutter speed. This would have given an exposure of roughly 1/500sec at f11. 1/500sec should be quite fast enough to eliminate camera shake when using a lens with a focal length of 112mm – which on the Nikon D80 is equivalent to about 180mm.
Keep ‘em coming, Margaret. Very well done!
Portraiture weekend
March 10, 2008 by Philip
Filed under Philip Dunn's PhotoActive Blog
Well, we’ve just had a fantastic weekend with a great bunch of people at the grand old Cally Palace Hotel here in Galloway. The theme was portraiture using flash and available light. I think everyone had a great time. Some travelled very long distances. Cliff flew up from the south coast of England, Russell came down from the wilds of Inverness, while Bob came all the way from The Isle of Man. Alwyn was the lucky one – he travelled just a few miles. One of the truly rewarding aspects of doing this tuition is that so many people come back again and again, and this weekend was no exception. Only Bob and Cliff had not been to me before either to Scotland or Menorca. Hopefully we will see them all again soon. It was also great to see Maria, a regular student of mine, she couldn’t make the whole weekend, but travelled from Edinburgh just to say hello and meet everyone.
Anyway, thanks to Ken, Cathy, Bob, Russell, Alwyn, Peter, Cliff for making the weekend so enjoyable. Oh, and thanks to Tom, our model, for the day.
I have embedded a short video below to show the gang at work.
This morning I got a lovely email from Cathy, one of the participants.
Well, Philip, you did it again! Worked your magic on a group of (almost)
total strangers, so that we all had a wonderful weekend of learning and fun.
Thank you!!
And thanks also to Norene for the organisation and patient posing, and to
Tom for his patience and good humour.
Thanks Cathy – and the whole gang.
Meeting photo bloggers
February 28, 2008 by Philip
Filed under Philip Dunn's PhotoActive Blog
It was great to meet Dave, Alison, Christine, Jamie and ‘Angel’ at the Focus on Imaging show at the NEC in Birmingham the other day. Thanks for coming up to say hello. Obviously the tee shirt with the photoactive web address did the trick and you were able to spot me. Frankly I don’t know how you did it with so many people there. I just can’t begin to tell you how much I appreciate your encouragement to keep blogging.
I had a good chat with folk at The Disabled Photographers Society stand and I’ll be telling you more about them soon. I’ve had one or two seriously disabled photographers come to me for tuition and I can tell you, some of these guys are just a bit good behind a camera. Take a look at their website…
http://www.disabledphotographers.co.uk/
I also met one of my very first and most frequent students, Ken. He was tempted by a good show discount and took the plunge to spent an awful lot of dosh on a new Canon. He’ll no doubt be showing it off when he comes up to SW Scotland next week for the photography weekend. I’ve arranged for him to spend a day shooting wildlife under the guidance of the local wildlife ranger before he arrives at the hotel… looking forward to having you with us again Ken.
I am thinking seriously about taking a stand at the show next year – so then I will be very easy to find and maybe meet lots more of you.
Photography Weekend place available
February 22, 2008 by Philip
Filed under Philip Dunn's PhotoActive Blog
Due to a late cancellation I now have one place available for the Photography Weekend on 7th – 9th March. The theme is portraiture with both available light and flash.
Full details on my website
You’ll really enjoy this one, but do let me know asap.
Photography holidays and weekends
February 14, 2008 by Philip
Filed under Philip Dunn's PhotoActive Blog
Okay, so I hope you enjoy the technique tips – well now it’s time you put up with a bit of promotion for the photography holidays and weekends I run here in SW Scotland and in Menorca, Spain.
All these events are designed to be instructive and a great deal of fun.
If you want any further details, please refer to my website for all contact details.
It would be great to have you with us.
Photography Weekend
7th -9th March at The Cally Palace Hotel, Gatehouse – the theme will be portraiture, both with and without flash £399 including all accommodation, meals and tuition
More details
Photography Holiday Menorca 1
2nd-9th May
Still some places available. The theme will be travel photography.
Still some places available. The theme will be travel photography.
We do not ‘suffer for our art’ – we stay in a beautiful 4 star hotel!
Photography Holiday Menorca 2
19th-26th September
The second of our Photography Holidays in Menorca. We will visit different locations, but the theme of Travel Photography will be the same. more details
October 31st – November 2nd 2008
At the Cally Palace Hotel
Photography Weekend
November 28th – 30th 2008
At the Selkirk Arms Hotel
Oh, the pictures show some of the photographers at work in Menorca – the top pictures is of Jan getting a little help from one of the locals. And that’s me in the white tee-shirt pulling George’s camera to bits… or was I putting it back together again?
Photography weekend in Scotland
January 28, 2008 by Philip
Filed under Philip Dunn's PhotoActive Blog
We’ve just said farewell to another group of photographers who have been with us for the weekend here in SW Scotland. I think I can safely say that the weekend was a success. We all had a lot of fun, in fact my sides are still aching from all the laughter. Norene and I really enjoy doing these photography weekends, and we always seem to make a whole bunch of new friends. That’s me with the daft hat and red jacket with some of the photographers.
Hundreds of photographs were taken over the last couple of days, and an awful lot of them were done for the first time using the Manual (M) mode. I do like to help and encourage my students to understand and use the M mode, but I always stress that they should not be a slave to it – it’s the photograph that matters, not how the camera captured it.
I get very little time to take photographs when I am coaching others, especially a group, so I didn’t get much chance to try out my new Canon G9. My first impressions are not very favourable – do I detect a considerable shutter lag? I’ll let you know more about this very soon when I have had chance to give the camera a thorough test when I am out taking photographs. Meanwhile if anyone has any experience of this little camera, please do post a comment and let me know what you think. I am already doubtful.Photography weekend
January 14, 2008 by Philip
Filed under Philip Dunn's PhotoActive Blog
Just to let everyone know, the Photography Weekend ‘ Making Pictures Happen on 25th-28th January here in SW Scotland is now FULLY BOOKED. I’m sorry if you have been disappointed and unable to get a place.
At the moment there are still places available for 7th -9th March at The Cally Palace Hotel – the theme will be portraiture, both with and without flash.
There are also still places available on the Photography Holiday in Menorca 2nd-9th May 2008. The theme will be travel photography.
These weekends and holidays are designed to be instructive and great fun. Come and join us.
Photography weekends and holidays
January 5, 2008 by Philip
Filed under Philip Dunn's PhotoActive Blog
I have two photography tutorial weekends coming up in 2008 here in Galloway and there are still a few places available.
25th-28th January here in Kirkcudbright at The Selkirk Arms Hotel – the theme will be Making Pictures Happen
£380 including all accommodation, meals and tuition
7th -9th March at The Cally Palace Hotel, Gatehouse – the theme will be portraiture, both with and without flash
£399 including all accommodation, meals and tuition
2nd-9th May There are still places available on the Photography Holiday in Menorca. Full details on my website. The theme will be travel photography.
These weekends and holidays are designed to be instructive and great fun, and I hope I will see you there. Here are a couple of snaps from the last holiday. The picture above shows Dominic, one of the group chatting to a local after taking his photograph. The other shows me giving some instructon to George, another member of the group, during our photo visit to the local fish market.
