Last week I had a cancellation for my Skye workshop, which was filled straight away, so the Skye trip is now sold out, for those of you who were considering it.

Lago Pehoe, Torres del Paine, Chile

As is the nature of having bookings taken so far in advance, things change in people’s lives and suddenly, they can’t make a trip any more. One of my participants for the Patagonia workshop can’t make it now due to a family member’s graduation, so there is now a freed up space on the Patagonia workshop.

Fox at Lago Grey, Torres del Paine, Chile

If you’d missed booking the trip when it sold out, then now is your chance to come along. It’s been a very popular trip so far, so if you want to come, have a look at the details here. It has all the information on the trip, and also the booking form should you decide to come.

First come, first served.

Just a quick post to let you all know that a space has become free for the Skye workshop this March 5th-10th.  One of the participants can’t make it due to damaging their knee. So if you were interested in this trip – now is the time to book, as there’s only one space :-)

Skye, December Workshop, © Bruce Percy

Service will be resumed once I’m back. in the meantime, enjoy this intermission.

Bay of Laig, last September workshop.

Each year I always find these trips slow to fill up because, I’m sure, that for most beginner photographers, they think that sunny weather and summer are the best times to take out the camera and make images. It just seems to be the nature of the beast. Also, most amateur photographers believe that Summer is the time for vacation, and winter is the time to board yourself up in the house, beside the fire, and wait it out until the sun comes back in Spring.

February study of the Pap of Glencoe (Lumix GF1 camera)

Well this is all very well, but most photographers don’t realise that the best images are made on the edge of changing weather, and we get a lot of that here in Scotland in the winter time. With one weather front passing over, only to be replaced by another weather front, there is never a dull moment.

I also find that people tend to take mental snap shots of the weather during their working day. If we get up in the rain and go to work in the rain, then we think it’s been raining all day. Ever since I started to do the workshops, I’ve never had a week where the weather is constantly wet or windy. It seems that as the week goes, I forget that we started off with a lot of wet weather and by the end of the week, we’ve experienced days of sun, cloudy weather, still mornings, windy evenings. It just keeps on changing.

The above four photos were taken this February on my Glencoe weekend workshop. The final day we were outside, the rain kept on coming in. I’ve seen photographers for years on my workshops want to pack away their cameras and consider the day is finished if the rain comes on. But it’s actually a very beautiful time to make images, if we can manage to keep the rain of our graduated filters and front lens elements. Anyway, just look at the moods in the sky I captured. This is only possible when things are changing, and dark clouds are passing through – and this kind of thing doesn’t happen on sunny days.

But winter is not just about changing moods on the landscape. Consider this Skye image below, shot last December:

Storr Loch, Skye Workshop, Dec 2010 © Bruce Percy

Those magenta tones are very visible in winter time, and mostly never seen in summer. In fact, I often think that summer is full of yellow tones in the sky. Winter on the other hand seems to provide some great textures to pay with in many ways: moving changing light, a low sun with long shadows across the landscape, and also of course fast moving clouds blending and blurring the skies as in this shot here of Horgabost beach on Harris:

Winter light on Horgabost beach, Harris

If you have been thinking for a while about coming on a workshop with me at some point, then we’re just coming into the best times of the year for shooting great, changing light.

The way I see it is that i’ve had a lot of participants over the past few years who, if they’ve mastered the editing on a computer side (otherwise known as the digital dark room in my book), few, actually print their material out. For the select few who do, there seems to be an endless disagreement about what is the right way to do it. Some find their prints too dark (a common mistake), or when viewing them, I find there’s a lot more that could have been done to optimise them.

Bruce's Viewing Booth & Eizo display

What I find very interesting is how we ‘read’ a print. If you’ve been fortunate to seen the work of Ansel Adams in the flesh for instance, you soon realise what a great print is. It’s very easy to think that most prints are good. Most prints are mediocre. Like your first photoshop edits, over a few years, you come back to your first prints and realise they weren’t very good at all. It takes a long time to master the final print. Like I say on my workshops – there is no good-taste button in photoshop. You can go too far, over saturate, over sharpen, completely kill the image and not realise it at the time. That’s where experience comes in.

I know there’s a lot of technical stuff to cover, and most get very bogged down in that region. But shouldn’t the final print be the final statement? How do you convey what you were feeling in the final print? Many suffer because they can’t get their prints to come out in a consistent way.

Printing requires an understanding of , and adoption of colour management practices. Just how do you make sure that what you see on your computer screen – matches exactly what you anticipate in the final print? I’ve had so many emails from people who tell me they have their colour management ‘close enough’. Well, it shouldn’t be ‘close enough’. That little statement suggests that it’s not consistent and they’re sometimes surprised by what pops out of the printer.

I’d love to give a workshop on making prints. I thought it would be great to cover some of the principles of colour management right through to digital dark room techniques and then the preparation for final output. Lastly, accurate print evaluation is really important.

I’d like to run some practical hands on workshops in my office, in the centre of Edinburgh next year. At the moment, my idea is to limit each workshop to a group of four, each with a computer, Eizo display and screen calibrator – for over a weekend. We’d go through setting up our environment for colour management, editing in the digital dark room, and producing high quality prints in a repeatable – expected way on an Epson printer.

Please don’t ask me any specifics about it just yet – as I’m in the middle of trying to work it all out, but I’ll let you know when I do have a more concrete syllabus for a weekend workshop.

Suilven, Assynt, Sutherland

This is just a short post to say that I now have 2 spaces available for those of you who had been interested in the workshop, but had noticed these past few months that it was sold out. I expect these spaces to go very quickly.

You can find out more about the Assynt workshop, as well as book (if you want to come)  here.

This Tuesday past, I announced to  subscribers to my news letter, that I am running two Photographic Safaris in South America next year.

The Patagonia photographic Safari is now sold out.

The Bolivian Altiplano Safari safari still has a few spaces left.

If you’d like to be put on the waiting list for for the Patagonia trip, then you can do it by going to the Patagonia workshop page and choosing the ‘book online’ button (confusing, I know), or go directly here.

If you’re not part of my news letter, and would like to get first hand news of any forthcoming workshops, then feel free to subscribe.

I’d just like to say a big thank you to all those who have booked these trips so far. I feel 2012 is going to be an exciting year!

I thought it would be nice to show you some of them as I think the images are rather lovely, and of course, the comments are very nice too.

Image © Peter De Wilde

Bruce,

I enjoyed the course very much. For me the essence was “less is more”.

Trying to simplify the landscape to make a stronger picture.

With the right balance of theory and practice, I’m sure it will move my photography to the next level.

I included some pictures from the last morning. (Not quite had the time to edit them completely)

Thanks to everyone for the good company !

Regards,

Peter De Wilde

Image © Duncan MacArthur

And many thanks to you Bruce for an eye opening few days.

I enjoyed and learnt from your critiques and will be spending probably even more time over my future photos as i try to put some of your composition ideas into action.

I enjoyed the whipping we got from the weather which may have been dire but gave us one or two exceptional moments (i spent at least one of them frantically wiping my lens….) the likes of which can only happen during dreadful weather! The food was fantastic, far beyond my expectations from Scotland (!) and went down better thanks to all those fun discussions we had at table. My bed was also very comfortable though i never spent very much time in it! It was great to meet all three of you and i hope you are all settling back into your post-Eigg lives. I also attach a photo from the last morning…..

All the best,

Duncan. (frae France)

Image © Niall Henderson

Hi Bruce

I really enjoyed the Eigg Trip last week.  The content of the course was just what I was looking for, with the right balance of tuition / guidance and space to try out the techniques you taught us.  I particularly enjoyed the feedback from the critique and post-production sessions and am looking forward to using the skills I’ve learned to (hopefully) simplify and make stronger images in the future.

Best regards
Niall

Image © Maurice Zelissen

Hi Bruce,Thanks for the unforgettable experience of last month’s Inverpolly workshop. It was everything I expected and more. You managed to have us use virtually every minute of that weekend in an enjoyable and instructive photographic experience.
One of my reasons for attending the workshop was my expectation that there are limitations to what you can learn from books and that you just need to be “out there” with someone guiding you. From the first hour in the field you proved that to be true.
Furthermore, despite of the busy schedule, you manage to create a relaxed and nice atmosphere in the group.

As you might remember, I stayed a few more days in Scotland after the workshop. I was glad you convinced me to stay in the area instead of traveling a lot. Basically, during the morning and evening hours I only revisited our workshop locations. Because you requested results ;-) I included some pictures of those sessions.

Your guidance in the field was excellent and the critique sessions were most useful with composition and photo editing guidelines, including some eye openers, like reconsidering aspect ratio. As said, thank you for everything you taught me, which is a lot. And since there is still even more to learn, you will probably see me in one of your 5 day workshops somewhere next year, together with a colleague who became enthusiastic when hearing about my experiences.

Regards,
Maurice Zelissen

–

Well, needless to say, that sort of feedback makes me feel very, very happy indeed, despite the fact that I don’t get a chance to make any images myself during the workshops (well, sometimes i do – if the participants are engrossed in what they’re doing and we’re well into the week).

So I’m now getting ready to take a break from the workshops until the end of August and I have a few plans in order, so I can make some new images of my own. Running a workshop business is very satisfying, especially when you see people ‘get’ what you’re trying to convey to them.

Still, I don’t get much of a chance to work on my own images, so this summer I’m off to Iceland, Norway and then Switzerland in October. For the next few months, this is my time, to be creative and work on my own art. I’m looking forward to it, and I’m also looking forward to having rewarding experiences with future participants in my up-coming workshops this Autumn and Winter.

Just a quick post today (as I’m currently on the Isle of Harris conducting a workshop) to let you know that the 2nd (and last) photographic safari to Lofoten, Norway for 2012 is now sold out.

I’d like to thank you all for your keen interest in this trip.

Five days in Lofoten, Norway, March 2011

There will be news in the next month or so about some further ‘world-wide’ photographic trips which will be announced firstly in my monthly news letter.

If you haven’t subscribed to my news letter and would like to know about these trips when they are announced, then you can do it here.

Thanks once again. I’ve been blown away by the level of interest for this trip.

I had a few people on the waiting list, and so far, three of them confirmed they are coming in March with me.

So this leaves 1 space left.

If you’d like to come, then you can review the trip details here but please bear in mind that the dates are 18th of March to the 24th of March inclusive of travel days. I have not advertised this single space on this workshop page because I want to give people on my blog first option.

if you decide you want to come – please email me and the first full-commitment email I receive will be considered the final place taker for this trip.

Lofoten this March © Bruce Percy

I’d like to thank everyone for their interest in this trip. It’s blown me away just how much interest there has been in it.

This is the last workshop in Norway for 2012.