Day 1 of my April 2025 Lake District Landscape Photography Workshop
Day 1 of any 5-Day Residential Lake District Landscape Photography Workshop starts with meeting at the house I’ve rented for the duration, to down gear, freshen up, have a coffee and discuss the days ahead
This is a great time for me to start to get to know not only the personalities of the attendees, but also their photographic level & aims too
I then introduce everyone to my approach to shooting any location, as…
shoot the obvious,
shoot the less obvious, and
shoot the details
Even after 20+ years of teaching this is still the basis of everything I teach, where I aim to instill an approach that maximises the potential of every location, and where I introduce my concept of ‘STSOOI’ - you have to have been on a course to know exactly what that stands for lol; but in essence it means shoot everything from every angle, every focal length and aperture/shutter speed suitable
I NEVER want anyone going home from a location, either with or without me, where they then look at their images on the computer and think… If only I’d done… xyz
So we started of with a trip to the awesome Castlerigg Stone Circle - its a bit wide and not tall, so getting it all in one photo generally means shooting it as a panorama, or best still from a drone, but the point of our trip here wasn’t about capturing it all, but about capturing the essence of Castlerigg
It was also an excellent subject to demonstrate how lighting affects the 3D look of a subject but using shadows to reveal form; and we also discussed both separation due to Depth of Field and also against the backgrounds
I introduced my attendees to my ‘Rule of Nearly’ too, something easily grasped and once applied it makes a quick & HUGE difference to the quality of your composition in virtually any scenario
Anyway, on to some of my first photos to show the principles involved…
Next we moved on to the lovely and small Tewet Tarn, which is only a mile away at most, though a wee bit of a hill/slope to walk up, which can get the lungs & legs working if you’re carrying a TON of gear!
Tewet Tarn is a lovely spot for photos at either sunrise or sunset, but it can be great at any time as you can easily walk most of the way around it, so it offers views into the far mountains and surrounding hills aplenty
It was here we started to really introduce the concept of using a Shallow DoF, shooting wide-open at whatever your widest aperture is (usually around f4 down to f1.8 for most lenses), and also a Large DoF, but limiting this to f11 to avoid the reduced lens quality, diffraction, and those damned Dust Bunnies!
Put simply…
Use a Shallow DoF to isolate your subject by making it the ONLY thing that’s totally sharp in your photo; this creates a natural (focus driven) vignette to tell your viewer exactly where you want them to look; there are other benefits too, but they’ll crop up more on future Days from this Landscape Photography Workshop in the Lake District
And…
Use a Large DoF when you want pretty much everything in sharp focus, so you’re encouraging the viewer to wander around in your photo to decide for themselves what the most important factors are
WARNING… DoF Calculators tend to ‘lie’ a bit !!!
So often you’ll see that everything can be ‘acceptably sharp’ (as they call it) from just a few feet in front of you at f11, right through to the farthest mountain; the ‘problem’ is in the phrase ‘acceptably sharp’ as in my experience its just not acceptable at all if you’re picky
This is where using such as Hyperfocal Focusing can prove to be so important, and with some subjects you can only really achieve a fully sharp image with Focus Stacking
Back to the photos then…
So I was showing how to use both a Shallow DoF and also a Large DoF on a range of subjects, as well as Leading Lines with the wall you’ll see here too; oh, and I also introduced the simple way to shoot a Panorama too, here with 7 images combined in Adobe Lightroom :)
And with that - we went to a pub for tea, a pint, and to continue our discussions on all things Landscape Photography based as the prefect way to end Day 1, and prepare for Day 2’s early start
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Speak soon
Dave