ingleborough & kingsdale photography workshop

The Yorkshire Dales are rightly renowned for their amazing and distinctive Geology. The Yorkshire Dales area was carved from the land some 350 million years ago by massive retreating slabs of melting ice. These Glaciers dug out the valleys leaving behind the hills that are prevalent today. Large boulders known as Glacial Erratics were carried along with the ice and deposited on top of the Limestone pavements that The Yorkshire Dales are famed for. Over millions of years the Limestone around these Glacial Erratics is eroded by the elements, only the portion of stone beneath the boulder is protected from the weather, leaving the Erratic perched on its own Limestone pedestal.

On this landscape photography workshop we will concentrate our photographic efforts on some of the most stunning areas of Limestone scenery and glacial erratics to be found anywhere in the U.K. The day could begin at any one of three locations, which as well as the dramatic geology at our feet, will give us some spectacular views towards Ingleborough Hill and Whernside, two of the Yorkshire Dales' stunning 'Three Peaks'.

This whole area of the Yorkshire Dales is full of amazing photographic potential, and we will have an abundance of dramatic subject matter to focus our attention on throughout the day. We will likely manage to photograph three or possibly four locations depending on time. There are images to be made in literally all directions, making this area the perfect location for a landscape photography workshop. Rather than have a rigid location plan, we will react to the prevailing weather conditions and shoot different areas as the light hits different parts of the landscape, which is pretty much how I myself work when out photographing the landscape. The day will include at least 8 hours of tuition, taking in both sunrise and sunset. At some point throughout the day, we will more than likely stop off at a local cafe for breakfast or lunch. This will also provide an opportunity to review the mornings images and also for me to demonstrate a basic raw post processing workflow using Photoshop on the laptop.

On booking you will receive a simple questionnaire to fill out which helps me to tailor the day exactly to your requirements. A basic day can possibly include tuition on the following subjects, (where required); Best practice camera set-up, shooting manual and Raw Format and the reasons why, creative uses of both shutter speed and apertures, explanations of exposure, metering, bracketing e.t.c, manual focusing for maximum depth of field (Also known as Hyperfocal focusing) The use of filters, both exposure balancing (Neutral Density Graduated) and creative effects (Polarisers, Straight Neutral Density) This leaves the best part of the day free to discuss the broader and more subjective topic of composition. What makes a good image? Elements to look for when composing images, the rules of composition, use of depth, scale, distance and perspective, shoot and location planning around seasonal and differing lighting conditions, so you can go away and successfully plan the best times of year to photograph your own set of locations. I can also tailor tuition to your particular, specific requirements where necessary. Past clients have asked for help on many different subjects and techniques; These have included shooting and processing panoramic images, using tilt & shift lenses, shooting and processing images for focus stacking and exposure blending.

If time and circumstances permit, then I also go through a typical Photoshop workflow, demonstrating the adjustments used from Rawfile through to outputting images for web and print. This also covers some alternatives to using Neutral Density Graduated Filters, in the form of Exposure Blending incorporating alpha channels / luminosity selections and layer masks.