Fellow Photographers,

Welcome to this week’s Newsletter. As ever we have full details of the next five events at the studio, but I particularly want to draw your attention to the “Intermediate Photography Course” which starts on Sunday. This 7 or 8 week course is designed to take your photography on to the next level and move beyond the basics. I try to keep numbers on this course relatively small so that I can be sure of being able to provide relevant training and feedback throughout the course. I already have four people signed up and a further three people have expressed interest in doing the course this time. So if you do want to join please sign up quickly.

I’ve included two recent blog posts in the newsletter. One giving practical advice about photography in the rain the other a bit of information about the on-line booking system for studio events.

Two photos of the day and a little bit of background to their creation are also included.

As ever for full details of the events and all of the above posts, please read on….

Forthcoming Events

Friday, 19 October 2012 – Dance Dance Dance

Dance Dance Dance

Location: Ian’s Studio
Time: 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Price: £25

The theme for tonight’s “Friday Night at the Studio” event will be dance. We will be working with a professional dancer to create dance related images.

Throughout the evening there will be chances to photograph ballet poses, charleston (1920s flapper) and modern jazz dance styles.

Our model is pro dancer : Candymayfalls – http://www.purestorm.com/profile.aspx?id=candymayfalls.

Price: £25

Please book via my website: http://www.ians-studio.co.uk/events/dance-dance-dance/

Sunday, 21 October 2012 – Intermediate Photography Course (8 Sessions)

Intermediate Photography Course (8 Sessions)

Location: Ian’s Studio
Time: 3:00 PM – 5:30 PM
Price: £165 (8 sessions) £155 (7 sessions)

Weekly on Sunday Afternoons 3.00pm till 5.30pm (approx) from 21st October 2012

The course will consist of eight sessions (session 5 on glamour, boudoir, & art nude is optional). Each session will be two and half hours in length.

Each session will look at one or two related genres of photography. We will cover techniques and equipment, and I will be providing practical advice and where appropriate I’ll share experiences from a professional perspective.

Session 1 : Travel and Architecture
Session 2 : Available light portraiture and Weddings
Session 3 : Off Camera flash and strobist techniques
Session 4 : Studio portrature
Session 5 : Glamour, boudoir and art nude photography
Session 6 : Events, theatre and performance photography
Session 7 : Macro, product and commercial photography
Session 8 : Sports and wildlife photography

Each session will leave you with some homework to reinforce the skills and techniques we have talked about.

Price:
8 Sessions: £165.
or 7 Sessions (omitting session 5) : £155

The course is aimed at photographers who have a reasonable level of photographic knowledge. I have designed the course to be particularly suitable for those who have already completed my “Introduction to Digital Photography” course. If you have not completed that course, you should have an understanding of photographic techniques such as exposure, aperture, controlling depth of field, etc. Experience of using flash guns is useful but not essential. As with any course the time spent on any given subject will be tailored to reflect the current knowledge and experience of those attending.

Printed course materials will be provided to all attendees. Throughout the course there will be opportunities should you wish to have your photographs assessed to help you improve.

Places on the course will be limited.

Please note: The course is designed for users of DSLR cameras. If you have a “compact” camera or a “bridge” camera please contact me to discuss its suitability for this course.

Please book via my website: http://www.ians-studio.co.uk/events/ipc-1210/

Friday, 26 October 2012 – Silhouettes

Silhouettes

Location: Ian’s Studio
Time: 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Price: £29

In tonight’s session we look at creating silhouettes. We will look at different styles of silhouettes including clothed images and art nude images.There will also be opportunities to create some silhouette bodyscape images such as this…

I am please to announce that the model for this event will be Strawberry Venom (aka Kayleigh). Kayleigh is a regular at the studio and when it comes to creating body shapes with her poses she is the best. Expect to get some unique images at this event. Her profile can be seen on Purestorm: http://www.purestorm.com/profile.aspx?id=Strawberry_Venom

Price £29

Please book via my website: http://www.ians-studio.co.uk/events/silhouettes/

Wednesday, 31 October 2012 – Digital rain & wet-look glamour workshop

Digital rain & wet-look glamour workshop

Location: Ian’s Studio
Time: 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Price: £69

This one day training event will teach how to create wet-look glamour images and to add rain effects and lightning effects in Photoshop.

During the morning we will spend 2-3hours in the studio working with one or more models (depending on the number of photographers attending) to create the wet-look glamour images which will be the basis of our completed shots.

During this time you will learn how to set up the lights needed to create the effects. You will learn some of the tricks employed to create wet-look images, including how to make the water droplets more visible, and how to control where the water goes. The session is a practical session and you will have plenty of opportunity to take photographs.

Please note: due to the nature of some of the images and techniques being demonstrated at this event the model(s) will be posing topless for some of the shots. If this is likely to cause offence please do not book to come on this course.

After lunch (which is included in the price of the course) we go into a tutorial session where you will be shown how to use Photoshop to add digital rain and digital lightning effects to the images we created during the morning session. If you have a laptop with Photoshop on it you are welcome to bring it with you and follow the tutorials as we go through them. Alternatively you can sit back, watch and then try out the techniques at your leisure at home. Either way you will be provided with printed notes on how to achieve the effects and a CD with a video screencast showing you the steps for both digital rain and digital lightning.

The model for this event will be announced later.

Cost £69 (includes lunch, printed notes, and a disk with video tutorial)

A £25 Deposit is required to reserve you place on this workshop. You can pay the deposit or the full amount here on-line here.

Please book via my website: http://www.ians-studio.co.uk/events/digitalrain0812/

Friday, 2 November 2012 – Male Nude Night

Male Nude Night

Location: Ian’s Studio
Time: 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Price: £29

Take the challenge of working with a male model to create stunning art nude images.

We will look at different posing and lighting techniques for working with male models. We will start with semi clothed images, and progress through to full male nude.

Details of the model will be announced shortly

Price: £29

Please book via my website: http://www.ians-studio.co.uk/events/male-nude-night/

From the Blog…

Making Bookings

I just wanted to take a few moments to talk about the booking system on the website.

Firstly I am aware that there have been one or two minor problems over the last couple of weeks. These have been identified as being caused a known bug in the latest version of the event manager software. I have reported the issue to developer and it is being investigated. I have put in place a couple of changes on my website which from the perspective of someone booking should resolve the issue (although I have an extra step to do at the back end).

If you get any more errors – please let me know (with a screen grab if possible) and I will do my best to get them resolved. If anything is preventing you from booking again let me know I can manually do the booking for you.

The bookings on the website is the definitive list of what places are left on an event. In short if you can book for an event on my website – there is a place for you.

I know many people now prefer to pay by PayPal as they book, but I am also aware some still want to pay cash on the night. I am still happy to accept cash on the night but only if you have been to at least two events at the studio and providing you have never booked for an event and not turned up. Sadly I have had to adopt this policy due to having had a couple of events where people have booked and no-showed leaving me running the event at a loss.

If you have been to previous events and want to pay by cash you should select “Pay Offline / Pay at the event” in the “Pay With” dropdown box at the end of the booking form….

If you haven’t been to two previous events and really don’t want to pay via PayPal please contact me directly and we can sort something out.

Photography in the Rain

A few hints and tips for photography in the rain….

The first concern in rainy conditions it to protect the camera and lens. High-end DSLRs and lenses have a certain amount of rain resistance.

Additional protection can be provided by using specialist rain covers, or even something as simple as a clear plastic bag with a hole cut in it for the lens and held in place with an elastic band.

For light rain/drizzle a small towel folded and placed over the camera to keep most of the moisture off it can work well. I’ve been told that those drip towels you sometimes find on bars are good for this and just about the right size too!

Lens hoods are just for sunny days. Use a lens hood to reduce the amount of water splashing on to the lens, and regularly check the lens for drops and clean them off with a lens cloth (keep the lens cloth in a plastic bag in your pocket).

When shooting in rainy conditions it is often best not to ‘fight’ the conditions. Instead of trying to take shots as though it wasn’t raining try to make the rain a feature of the images you are producing. Look for people holding umbrellas as points of interest in an image. Try to use reflections in puddles. One ‘trick shot’ to try is to just photograph the reflection of a building and then invert the image.

Photo of the Day

POTD 13 Oct 2012 : Past meets Present

You are probably aware that I am the official photographer for Stockport Garrick Theatre, this usually means doing production photographs at the theatre and sometimes publicity shots at my studio. This was the first time that I was ask to shoot a publicity shot for the theatre “on-location”.

The next production at the Garrick is “The Game” by Harrold Brighouse (See the Garrick Website for more information). I was asked to attend Stockport County Football Ground to take a shot of a Garrick member with the manager and captain of the football team. Because the play is set just before the first world war, I decided to make the Garrick half of the image sepia tone and also made that half of the football look older in style.

I’ve recently been asked by one person how you create sepia toning in Photoshop. So this is a good image to use as an excuse to talk about that. The quick way to sepia tone an image is to us an adjustment layer. Create a Hue/Saturation layer at the bottom of those controls tick the check box called “colorize” (It’s american – that’s why it is spelt wrong!). You then want to set the hue slider to approximately 36 and adjust the saturation and lightness sliders to suit the image.

You can see more images from the shoot at Stockport County here: http://photos.imb.biz/garrick/thegame

POTD 12 Oct 2012 – A Night With Zombie Candy

One of the image shot at Friday Night event “A Night With Zombie Candy” – The lighting for this was a Bowens light with a grid on it, camera right to give a very defined pool of light with shadows just large enough to cover Zombie Candy and the front of the bed. Camera left is a small softbox set on low power to just soften the shadows slightly. From the softbox just a little bit of light is spilling onto the bed head.