Diary

March 6th 2010

Cornwall provided some nice opportunities during the two workshops I ran last week. The weather wasn't exactly on our side, with either cloudless blue skies or completely overcast! The winds were surprisingly light as well, so unfortunately we didn't manage to make use of large waves in our images this time. Nevertheless, some of my favourite locations presented us with chances to get creative with our cameras, especially after sunset when we could work with torchlight (see Crown Tin Mines image below). The advantages of the calm conditions were that it was much safer to work close to the water's edge and our cameras didn't get too much of a soaking! I now have the unavoidable task of cleaning all my equipment to help prevent damage from corrosive salt spray. I always soak my tripod (legs only) in a bath of warm water for an hour to loosen the salt. I then brush it off in the water and rinse it under the shower. Once dry I apply a small amount of sewing machine oil to all exposed nuts and bolts (never lubricate the legs or leg clamps themselves). This can prolong the life of your tripod considerably if you work in coastal locations on a regular basis.

Dates for new Cornwall workshops will be announced soon but please register your interest now to guarantee a place. During the next couple of weeks I shall be lecturing around the country and running a Birds in Flight workshop in Gloucestershire. I'm then off to Northumberland to run one of my favourite landscape workshops. The next diary update will be posted upon my return.

February 25th 2010

Back from a fantastic trip to Tanzania with 12,500 new images to add to my backlog! We began at Lake Manyara which proved especially good for birds. Next stop was Ndutu on the border of the Ngorongoro Conversation area and the Serengeti National Park. This proved to be a great area for a whole range of wildlife. We photographed mating lions, huge flocks of storks and enormous herds of wildebeast and zebra out on the plains. We then moved on to the centre of the Serengeti at Seronera. The herds had moved on from there so we concentrated on hippos instead. We went back to explore different areas of the Serengeti around Naabi Hill and finally on to the Ngorongoro Crater. This was our first African safari and we learnt a great deal. There were places that we will return to and things that we would do differently next time. It was a great introduction to working with African wildlife but next time we will devote more time to achieving some more specific goals. It will take a while to edit and process all the new material but I hope to have some images added to the latest work gallery quite soon.

While we were away Cat found out that she had won the landscape category of the Wanderlust Travel Photographer of the Year competition...a great achievement!

Wanderlust Travel Photographer of the Year - Landscape Category Winner

I will be in Cornwall next week running two coastal landscape photography workshops....fingers crossed for some good light! The next diary update will reveal how we got on.

January 30th 2010

Welcome to my new web site! I thought it was about time for a complete revamp of the site. I also needed to introduce the ability to update certain sections myself. There is still a little more work to be done but I wanted to get the site online before I depart for a three week trip to Tanzania. Aside from the new design and layout you can expect the workshops and events pages to be kept fully up to date from now on. New material will be added to the latest work gallery on a regular basis and I will keep adding features to the articles page. The biggest change is the creation of the diary page, where I will add entries as often as possible and at least on a monthly basis. Here I will be able to keep you informed about the work I am currently undertaking and also provide advance notice of new workshops, events and projects that I have in the pipeline. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Mac at CamacWeb Services for all his help and design skills and for getting the site up and running in a short space of time. I am really pleased with the results we have achieved and I look forward to developing the site even further in the future.

Early last week I was in the Julian Alps in North West Slovenia running my annual winter workshop with my colleague Marko Trebusak. The weather was fantastic with plenty of snow on the ground and clear blue skies for much of the time. The temperatures hovered just below freezing during the day and dipped to -13C at the night. This provided our group of six participants with some great opportunities and fantastic light on the snow covered mountain peaks. Aside from beautiful winter landscape scenes we managed to shoot frozen waterfalls, close-ups of frost and ice crystals and trees covered with hoar frost. On the last night we stayed out until almost midnight shooting one hour exposures of star trails over the alpine summits from a mountain pass at an altitude of 1600 metres. Our decision to move the Winter in Slovenia workshop from March to January certainly paid off! We are currently waiting for Easyjet to update their flight schedule for early 2011 but dates for next year’s winter workshop will be around the third or forth weekend in January once again. Please register your interest now.