Photography Workshops Near Manchester New Dates Added

November 4, 2014 by Nigel

New dates for photography workshops near Manchester have been added into January and February 2015.

All of the photography workshops can be booked via that link.

As well as the photography workshops, which are one day events which generally last from 9.30 in the morning to around 4.30 in the afternoon, we are going to be launching modular courses which take place over three half days.

The plan is to run these from 9.30 in the morning to 1.00pm in the afternoon. They will all be on a Saturday and will take place at our usual venue the Pack Horse Inn in Birtle Greater Manchester.

The location is half an hour’s drive from Manchester and many other locations in Cheshire and Lancashire and offers accessibility yet beautiful rural settings for photography.

The idea is to break up the content of the beginners photography workshop into three larger chunks so that delegates can take a little more time to absorb the information. In between the course dates, delegates can put into practice what they have learned and this can be reviewed at the next week’s session.

In this way we hope that the learnings from our photography courses will be absorbed more easily by the student and also lead on to students wanting to consider moving on to our intermediate photography workshops.

As well as these new modular courses we will soon be launching Photoshop and Lightroom courses at a location in the centre of Bury in Greater Manchester which offers more of a classroom setting.

Please keep a look out for news for of both the launch of the modular courses soon and also the launch of our photo editing courses.

We are coming to the end of our first 2014 season with the East Lancashire Railway of running special steam train photography courses, but we will be announcing new courses in the New Year.

Photography Gift Vouchers Competition

November 2, 2014 by Nigel

Our Photography Courses competition is now live as part of our exhibition of wildlife photography at the world famous Martin Mere wetlands centre in Lancashire.

We are exhibiting around sixty images all taken by our tutor Barrie Kelly who has traveled the world capturing startling images of birds and animals.

The exhibition is split into three categories of image: United Kingdom, Europe and Africa (in particular photographs taken in the Masai Mara in Kenya.)

The competition we are running allows visitors to the exhibition to be entered into a prize draw to win photography gift vouchers.

Entrants to the photography gift vouchers competition are entered into a free prize draw to win gift vouchers which have a total value of £400.00

There are two prizes of photography gift vouchers to the value of £75.00 and ten photography gift vouchers to the value of £25.00

How to Win Photography Gift Vouchers

To be entered into the photography gift vouchers competition you have to email the phrase that is on the poster at the exhibition at Martin Mere to the address shown. One entry per email address. The draw will be made after the birdwatching festival closes and winners will be notified by email.

We guarantee that we will not share entrants’s email addresses with any third party, but may from time to time alert entrants to offers and promotions from North West Photography Courses. Entrants can request to have their email details deleted at any time.

As well as exhibiting photographs at Martin Mere, we are also offering free workshops on wildlife photography led by Barrie Kelly.

These take place on Saturday 22nd November and Sunday 23rd November. The workshops can be booked via the centre but it is advisable to call as soon as possible as interest is bound to be very high.

Barrie is a former Olympic athlete who says his success in wildlife photography owes much to the determination and focused pursuit of excellence learned whilst competing at the highest level in sport.

Barrie’s wildlife photography began with a point and shoot camera he borrowed when he was on a safari in 1990. A hobby turned into a passion which has taken him around the world on assignments and now he uses skills to teach others.

Barrie will go into detail on his approach to a shoot and the techniques he uses to achieve the absolute sharpness and detail that distinguishes the highest levels of wildlife photography.

He will select some favourites from his work to describe how he achieved the images and will be happy to answer questions from photographers of every level of ability.

Advance booking of the workshops is essential as numbers are limited. To book your place please call 01704 895181

Photography Gift Vouchers for Courses

October 29, 2014 by Nigel

We have updated the prices of our photography gift vouchers to make them easier to match to the prices of our photography courses.

You can buy photography gift vouchers which are valued at £25 and £50 and this means that you can combine them for all our courses which are typically £75.00 per person. For advanced and one to one courses the gift vouchers can be combined in any way that suits your needs.

Photography gift vouchers make the perfect Christmas gift for someone who is about to get a camera as their main present or perhaps you have all the photography equipment you need at the moment but people are asking you what you’d like for Christmas.

The beauty of giving a photography gift voucher is that in reality you are giving someone a very enjoyable day of tuition but they will use the skills they learn on one of our courses to capture a lifetime of memories that they can share with you and others. That has to be a much better idea than a Christmas jumper they may never wear after Boxing Day.

We are finding that more and people are coming on our photography courses because a friend or a loved one knows that they have some interest in photography and a decent camera and has asked them to take the photos at a special gathering such as a wedding or a major birthday celebration in the family.

This is understandable as a professional photographer at an event like this can be prohibitively expensive, but if you are faced with what might be quite a daunting task, then asking your friend to invest a little money in a photography gift voucher to enable you to build your skills is almost certainly a little money very well spent.

So if you feel that you could do with brushing up your skills and someone is pestering you for ideas for your Christmas present then a photography gift voucher is easy to buy through our secure payment service and you can use it the develop your skills which will last you for years. Plus, it couldn’t be easier to fit a voucher in your Christmas stocking.

Photoshop Tutorial

September 1, 2014 by Nigel

This Photoshop Tutorial will take you through the workflow and stage of editing a RAW file into an image that is true to its subject but captures a particular mood.

We are using images shot by Alan Davies, one of our students who enjoyed a one to one photography course at the forge with Ben Taylor our friendly and expert farrier.

Digital Cameras now allow loads of margin to experiment with our creative side, however, you also have to be selective and manage those images with a workflow, which should be kept fairly simple and not become onerous.

You can use any software to browse the images you have taken, here we use Adobe Lightroom (5.6) which provides us with a ‘filmstrip’ view along the bottom and an ability to view each image at full size (fig 1.)

A handy overlay can be applied to help you frame/crop your image, here I have used a ‘Rule of Thirds’ overlay on the original full sized image (images courtesy of Alan Davies).

Along the right you can see the histogram and basic edits panels which are fairly much the same as those found in Adobes RAW Editor as part of Photoshop.

The basic panels are used adjust the ‘White Balance’ and Basic Tonal edits prior to more enhanced work available in Photoshop.

Photoshop Tutorial Step by Step

Fig 1.

A key consideration is how you want your image to tell the story, cropping is often a consideration and with a good original image shot in RAW format as opposed to Jpeg you can consider the image and adjust to your liking including Cropping/levelling/straightening Fig 2.

Fig 2.

Basic Panel Edits.

White Balance is a key consideration setting ‘mood’ via the colour temperature and lighting conditions. Here if you shoot in RAW you can adjust the ‘feel’ of the image in post production with ease. Default White Balance will be ‘As Shot’ You can change this using the temp and tint sliders or use the ‘eye drop’ tool and click it onto an area in your image that should be a light grey colour. In figure 3, I have done this on The Farriers T Shirt to set ‘feel’ to the image and then adjusted in sequence: Exposure, Contrast, Highlights/Shadows, White & Blacks and Vibrance (which subtly enhances colours).

Fig 3

The image now starts to take on some of the mood and action in the Farriers Forge.

Lens Corrections Panel

These are used to help correct some optical issues that come with digital image capture. In essence Adobe has store profiles for Cameras and Lens combinations which you need to apply to correct things like distortion and colour corrections such as Chromatic Aberration (CA). Both Lightroom and Camera RAW have the boxes for them Fig 4.

Fig 4

Pre Sharpening and Noise reduction

All digital images require sharpening in stages usually referred to as pre and post sharpening. If you shoot in Jpeg mode then the camera has already applied a degree of sharpening however if you have shot in RAW you will need to consider the image and apply an amount of pre sharpening. There are various aspects to this process including type of camera sensor; here we will simply go through what the pre sharpening process is. The default controls (fig 5) have four sliders: Amount, Radius, Detail & Masking.

Amount is set at 25% by default and increase the overall effect as you increase it.
Radius, affects the edges of the images determining the width of halos, thus a smaller setting concentrates around the fine edges having less impact on the wider, softer edges.
Detail, suppresses halo effects allowing increases in amounts of sharpening whilst minimising halo generation.
Masking, allows you to target the sharpening covering up what you don’t want the effect to be applied to.

In Fig 6 we have increase overall sharpening to finer detail and masked out the effect quite a lot to background areas.

Noise

Camera noise often varies subject the quality of the cameras sensor and what ISO setting the shot was taken at. All have a base level of noise however when ISO is increased (as in this image) to help achieve a shutter speed sufficient to capture the action noise becomes evident in the image. There’s plenty of debate on what is ‘acceptable’ levels of noise in images be they on screen or printed.

We can explain that the fine grain/speckled noise you see in images is/can be corrected using the luminance slider whilst the magenta/green speckles/blotches you see are caused by the sensors inability to differentiate colour in low light is dealt with by the colour slider.

Fig 6

Having completed basic adjustment in Lightroom or Camera RAW we will take the images to Photoshop for few final tweaks.

First I have changed the histogram to show luminosity, which as expected tells me there’s a lot of information to the left indicating shadows and dark areas. However in this image I am after such and will now further ‘punch’ that using a curves layer and change the blend mode to ‘multiply’ (56%) to enhance even further the dark areas.

Fig 7.

I then applied a 2^nd curves layer changing the blend mode to screen (15%) to enhance the lighter areas in the image.

Fig 8

The image is now taking on the feel I am after however, I want to give an extra bit of punch so here I will use on the excellent add on filters from Topaz Labs to help me achieve it.

Fig 8.

Applying a small amount of Topaz (spicify) and a vignette finishes off the image above.

Output.

Saving this high resolution file as a Tiff, we now have to decide is how the file will be used. In this case I am going to output it to screen for internet use.

Fig 9.

Here I have selected the Image resize option and reduced to 1200 pixels on the long side which is sufficient for general internet use. Having reduced the image size the last thing to do is apply output sharpening for the intended use. You can use a variety of approaches to this including Photoshop Smart Sharpen, Unsharp Mask and third party add on’s. Be sure not to over sharpen though.

In Photoshop, select ‘save for Web’ (fig 10.) and save to your desired folder.

Fig 10.

Fig 11.

Thanks to Alan Davies for the RAW images and Ben Taylor (Team GB Farrier).

Manchester Photography Course Competition Winners

August 27, 2014 by Nigel

We were delighted to welcome Manchester photography course winners to enjoy a free half day taster session in conjunction with the highly respected Manchester based blog www.creativetourist.com

Our winners enjoyed the quick jaunt out from Manchester to enjoy Birtle’s rural setting on a beautiful summer morning.

Hopefully some or all have now been bitten by the photography bug and will be back for more detailed skills development on our photography courses.

Here’s a couple of quick images from the day

Wildlife Photography Workshops Lancashire

August 25, 2014 by Nigel

Wildlife photography workshops Lancashire

We are pleased to announce that we will be providing wildlife photography workshops as part of the North West Bird Watching Festival which takes place on 22nd and 23^rd November at Martin Mere in Lancashire.

Our very own Barrie Kelly will be running a number of wildlife photography workshops over the course of the weekend.

The workshops are free and can be booked directly with Martin Mere on 01704 895181.

If you are not familiar with Martin Mere, it is owned and operated by the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust and is a centre of world renown that really comes into its own in winter when it attracts migrating birds in huge flocks such as pink-footed geese and wigeon, many whooper swans and occasional rarer birds such as the snow goose.

It is also excellent for wintering birds of prey such as hen harrier, peregrine and merlin.

It has 11 observation hides across its hundreds of acres offering outstanding photography opportunities

In addition to the wildlife photography workshops, an exhibition of Barrie’s work will be on show from Monday 3^rd November to Friday 5^th December and mounted prints of some of Barrie’s stunning work shot around the world will be available to buy. They would make beautiful Christmas gifts for any wildlife photographer or anyone who appreciates the beauty of nature.

What will the wildlife photography workshops cover?

Barrie will go into detail on how he approaches his work generally and using images taken from his exhibition explain how he got the shot and the technical challenges it presented.

The workshops are free but sure to be booked up very quickly so please don’t hesitate to call Martin Mere on 01704 895181

Dressage Photography Course

August 13, 2014 by Nigel

Our dressage photography course on 31 August is an ideal introduction to the special skills required for this branch of photography and is the partner to our showjumping photography course on 24^th August.

What’s on our Dressage Photography Course?

We aim to provide a very practical introduction to dressage photography in our mini day workshop which takes place at Birtle Riding Centre.

Things we will be covering include

Choosing where to stand for the weather conditions and the course, especially looking for the sun relative to the arena
Assessing the arena and choosing the best backgrounds with the least distratctions
Looking for where horses will be turning and where they will be heading straight on to the camera, with what that means in terms of a variety of landscape and portrait photographs
If the light is variable on the day thinking about whether to choose shutter priority over aperture
Choosing where to stand so that you are not distracting to the rider and horse
One of the most critical aspects of dressage photography is learning to anticipate the perfect moment to get the shot. This is all about knowing the when the peak moment of each move comes. in the extended trot it would be when the horse is the most extended or stretched into the trot. The horse has a rocking horse action and it is always better to catch it when the front is in the up position or the horse is flat

One of the key things to remember in dressage photography is that the position of the horse is just a part of the picture. Dressage is very precise, like dancing, the rhythm of the rider and horse together make a perfect partnership. Together they make the perfect team.

The price is just £30 per person for the afternoon.

Manchester Photography Fans Take Note

August 3, 2014 by Nigel

Manchester photography fans will be pleased to hear that a film about a photographer Vivian Maier is showing at Cornerhouse at the moment.

Maier’s photography was almost unknown until after her death when thousands of photographs were discovered in her private collection.

It seems that she took no photography courses and was self taught, working as a nanny for decades and quietly developing her technique of street photography.

She kept a lock-up filled with unprocessed film and the contents were bought by a flea-market enthusiast who began to process the film and realised the quality of her photography.

Maier’s photography is often of people on the edge of society trying to make their way in the word and also features glamorous women shopping and brightly lit buildings.

The reviews of the film and interviews with people who knew her reveal a troubled character:

“It is sad as well as perplexing that the woman who had such a knack for capturing human moods and expressions in her photographs, and showed such tenacity and originality in making her work, should have passed her whole life without forming intimate relationships of her own. In her last years she was a pitiful figure, often seen on a bench in a park, eating corned beef hash from a can.” writes the Guardian.

Perhaps this remoteness was the secret of her ability.

Street photography is where a great many photographers start.

It is not easy, requiring the photographer to engage with strangers who may not welcome the approach or to work up close to the subject whilst remaining apart from the action to capture a moment candidly.

One of the key aspects is learning to be confident and quick with your camera’s controls and settings so that a fleeting moment can be captured perfectly, something that is at the heart of all our photography courses.

Showjumping Photography Course

July 27, 2014 by Nigel

Showjumping photography is an enjoyable challenge for photographers of every level of skill and If you are a horserider or you know someone that is, our showjumping photography course is a great introduction.

One of the challenges is that you can’t get very close to the horses as they compete so a telephoto zoom lens in the range of 70 to 200mm will help enormously.

If your camera has the ability to shoot at high=speed that will help to capture the action as the horse approaches the fences or is turning.

Although obviously horses are famously unpredictable the setting of the competition gives you predictability of where the horse will be and when, giving you the chance to prepare your shot to capture the shot as the horse prepares to make its jump.

Working with our friends at Birtle Riding Centre we can get into the best places to capture the horse head on or side on the camera to freeze the action mid-jump.

If your camera doesn’t have a fast auto-focus then it’s still possible to capture the shot you want by pre-focussing on the jump obstacle and releasing the shutter as the horse begins its jump.

For extra control, try this with the auto-focus off as this can sometimes create lag between the shutter button and the camera firing.

Of course you might want to focus on the rider rather than the horse. The concentration on a rider’s face can make an excellent study, but it is a challenge in a head on shot to have both the rider and the horse’s head in focus.

A shutter speed of 1/500^th is generally fast enough to get the right crispness in your image and then work on your depth of field.

A horse rising is almost always a more appealing shot than landing but a rider’s face at this point can be very expressive!

All of these suggestions and techniques will hopefully be covered on showjumping photography course on 24^th August which starts at 1pm and will last for about three hours. The price per person is £30.

Steam Train Photography Courses News

July 17, 2014 by Nigel

Our vintage train photography courses with the East Lancashire Railway are building up a head of steam!

We hope to attract steam train enthusiasts from Manchester Lancashire Cheshire and beyond to the famous East Lancs line with behind the scenes visits to maintenance areas not open to the public and expert tuition in a relaxed, friendly small group setting.

Our first courses run later this month and we were very pleased to get this media coverage of our courses from the Bury Times.

Look out for leaflets and posters going up soon and of course you can book via the link here for our vintage train photography courses

What’s Involved on Train Photography Courses?

The day is suitable for photographers of all abilities as we tailor the content to your requirements and the small group size means that there is plenty of opportunity for one to one tuition on exactly what you want from your photographs of steam and diesel trains

We the day begins at the ELR main station in Bury with a welcome over a cup of team and then we begin in earnest developing your technique both in our classroom at Bolton Street Station and on the platforms.

After a quick sandwich lunch (included in the price) we board the train, shooting more images as we make our way to the picturesque surroundings of Irwell Valley station which has great vantage points for photographing trains as they make their way up and down the line.

After rejoining the train, we make our way back to Bury where we lift the barrier to let you into areas the public cannot see and we spend a good amount of time with the maintenance teams at work on the engines, getting up close to the trains and providing you with scores of opportunities to take photographs of the trains and the historic workshops.

01706 452840

Photography Workshops Near Manchester New Dates Added

Photography Gift Vouchers Competition

How to Win Photography Gift Vouchers

Photography Gift Vouchers for Courses

Photoshop Tutorial

Photoshop Tutorial Step by Step

Manchester Photography Course Competition Winners

Wildlife Photography Workshops Lancashire

What will the wildlife photography workshops cover?

Dressage Photography Course

What’s on our Dressage Photography Course?

Manchester Photography Fans Take Note

Showjumping Photography Course

Steam Train Photography Courses News

What’s Involved on Train Photography Courses?

North West Photography Courses

Quick Links

Useful Links

How to Win Photography Gift Vouchers

Photoshop Tutorial Step by Step

What will the wildlife photography workshops cover?

What’s on our Dressage Photography Course?

What’s Involved on Train Photography Courses?

North West Photography Courses

Quick Links

Useful Links

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