Tofino Workshop 2012!
Mark your calendars now for May 8-13, 2012 and check the airline websites- its time to start think about joining Brenda Berry and me in Tofino, British Columbia for a spectacular photographic workshop on the wild coast of Pacific Canada. The price of the workshop is $1075. The alternative is to not come with us and then spend that week fretting and cranky wondering why you decided to do your laundry and have your car detailed instead of getting some of the best pictures of your lifetime. Laundry or black bears? Lint or wonderful tidepools? Hairy candy bars or huge old-growth cedars? Cute surfer chicks and dudes on sunset water or grunge hair bags in jeans belted at their knees? Are you really struggling with this? Really? Just in case you don’t believe how good this workshop is remember that it is a day longer than my usual workshops, we go out on at least one black bear photography trip in our own boat along the shore, it is based in a UNESCO Biosphere reserve, we visit Meares Island and its cathedral grove of ancient, gigantic cedars and it is really fun! Still don’t believe me? Here is a short video I took on the bear boat trip. I used a 16mm lens so the bear appears to be much smaller and further away than it really was. Tofino bear from boat from David Middleton on Vimeo. And as further enticement here are some images taken during this workshop. I hope you enjoy them. I also hope that you contact me and sign up for this trip! [nggallery id=16]
A new workshop!
I have decided to offer a new workshop in 2012- Available Light Travel Photography- through the Santa Fe Workshops in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The workshop will start Wednesday March 28 and go to Sunday, April 1. Please contact the Santa Fe Workshops for complete registration information- Offering a new workshop is a pretty big deal for me; I won’t teach a workshop unless I feel I have more than enough practical experience and insider’s knowledge to make it a completely worthwhile experience for my potential students. After dabbling with travel photography for the first 20 years of my professional career and having now finished my third travel photography based book in the last 10 years I feel ready to offer this class. It’s going to be great fun as well! Travel photography is different from general nature photography or wildlife or landscape or macro photography because a tripod usually isn’t used, faster shutter speeds and more wide open f-stops are used and stalking subjects is replaced by sitting a waiting for them to come to you. How do you tell a travel photographer from a nature photographer? A nature photographer will be snarling, holding a crumpled map in a mud covered SUV while a travel photographer is smiling, hold a glass of wine in an outdoor cafe. What I mean by available light photography is shooting even when the light is low, even very low. Many of my recent favorite pictures have been taken when the light is so low that my initial thought on the potential of the scene was “not enough light” or even ” don’t even think about it.” But with a bit of cleverness and ‘why-not’ spirit combined with an unholy trust in the great Gods of Photography I tried and tinkered and fiddled and ended up getting some really nice images that I never would’ve thought possible. [nggallery id=14] This workshop is about how to wander around the next time you are in an exotic location and hand hold your way to spectacular any-kind-of-light pictures. I will of course talk about the advantages of using a tripod but I won’t mention using flashes or strobes or slaves or soft boxes or bounce light or cords or power sources or the sore muscles you will get hauling all that stuff around. No frustration in this class, no calculation anxiety and no feelings of inadequacy because you think you are not as smart as your flash (you’re not, get over it!). Expect to be outside at twilight and inside at mid-day working the shadows and dimly lit alcoves of Santa Fe. I will talk about lots of how-to technique- how to approach people, how to trust your camera, How to find good hand-held compositions, how to find a background and wait for a subject and how to link you images together to create a visual narrative or sense of story. No, it’s not the typical workshop I teach but it will be fun and different and you will find yourself taking pictures of things you have never tried before in lighting conditions you never would’ve thought possible. Now how bad can that really be?!? [nggallery id=15]
New Zealand!
For the last three weeks I have been touring New Zealand on an end of the year holiday. Just the two of us, no rushing around, no big objectives, no projects to work on, just having fun. I didn’t even take a tripod! What did I take? My old Nikon D300s (because it is the camera Claire uses and taking the same camera made it easier) and one lens- my trusty 28-300. Claire brought her 18-200 so between us we had all lens lengths covered. I actually spent more time bird watching than I did taking pictures but this was due more to the time of day we were traveling around then the lack of things to photograph. And we saw a lot of sheep- sheep, sheep, sheep. A fella only needs so many pictures of sheep. Turns out I need none! We also had a long spate of sunny skies and we all know what I think of photographing under blue skies. Two wonderful misty mornings in the forest saved me and allowed me to take some nice forest shots. So here are some of my favorites- some endemic birds including two iconic parrots (the kaka and the kea), and two old-growth forest shots. Hope you enjoy them. I’ll get back to my dull pedantic screeds soon. Take that as a warning! [nggallery id=13]
Maine Pic
Okay, not spectacular and pretty nice. Shot on a rainy day in late October. It will be a nice splash of color for the book.
Maine Pics
Here is an odd shot. I wanted to get a shot of the cruise ships that come into Bar Harbor but I didn’t want a standard ugly shot of a big boat. (Why did I want a picture of a cruise ship you ask? Because the book is geared for tourists and thousands of tourists travel to Maine on cruise ships. Everyone is a potential book buyer). So I shot this images trying to ‘hide’ the ship. Not really hide it but let it blend in a bit as a backdrop to the traditional lobster boat harbor. I can’t tell whether this is a really clever shot or a really ugly shot of a big boat. I have submitted it to the publisher so I will have to wait to see what they think.
More maine pics
It was a funny fall this year. Not much color at first and then nothing for the first week of October. Then, around the end of the second week of October there was a little cold snap and what leaves were left came ablaze. The only time I had to photograph it was a few hours between consecutive workshops, in the rain. But you do the best you can and keep your wits and sometimes things work out. The reason it is a square format is because the book is square so I composed and cropped to square to take advantage of most of the page.
Maine Pics
Boy, was it cold up here this morning! We did a sunrise shoot and my students got some very nice images. On the way back to the car and snapped of this shot looking south to the Cranberry Isles. I then hightailed it back to the warm car and we headed down to the coast.