Fellow Photographers,
This week’s newsletter is going to be to the point. The point is “In depth training”There comes a time in any hobby or interest where if you want to advance your skills you need to take the time to actually learn, and not just pick things up as you go along. Don’t get me wrong learning as you go is good. But sometimes we hit barriers and need an extra push to help us break through them.The three events I am highlighting this week all fall in to the category of going beyond the basics.

Friday 15th May – Splash, Bang, Wallop – we look at some advanced techniques for high-speed photogrphy.
Saturday 16h May – Lightroom CC/6 Upgrade Workshop – learn the new feature in the latest version of Adobe Lightroom.
Sundays from 31st May – In Depth Art Nude Course – 6 weeks looking working with 6 different models and learning a plethora of skills to enhance your art nude photography.

This week’s Featured Post is all about Mentoring – custom training to take your photography to the next level. The second part of this feature may be particularly of interest to those photographers who are not local to the north west of England.

So as ever for all this an more… please read on….

Featured Post

BLOG: Tue 12 May 2015, Mentoring

Studio Photography Mentoring

You probably know I already offer a mentoring option with studio hires. If you wish to hire the studio for a shoot, I charge the normal studio hire fee plus an additional fee to mentor you during the hire.

What I offer with these sessions is firstly training in how to set up the lights (if you need it) instead of just helping you set up whatever lights you specify we will talk about what you want your lighting to achieve and how best we can configure the lights to make this happen. If I know in advance the lighting you are going to work with I will try to provide you with lighting diagrams so you can recreate the effect in the future. I also show you step by step how the lights are set-up.

Next during your shoot I sit in and observe how you shoot, and how you work with the model. Where necessary I offer advice on how to improve your technique, and make suggestions for props, posing and adding in other ideas that you may not have considered.

At the moment I have a very simple pricing structure for this kind of training. It is studio hire fee plus 50%. So a four hour session would be £60 for the studio hire, plus £30 for the mentoring. I am happy to help book models but you are responsible for paying them!

As of the end of June this pricing structure will change, but any mentoring sessions booked before then will be charged at this rate. So if you are thinking of booking a studio hire with mentoring please book soon to take advantage of these lower rates.

Remote Mentoring

I now have more and more people on my mailing list who are not local to the north west of England and who cannot easily attend training events at the studio. I am in the process of developing techniques to provide mentoring and training remotely.

This sort of training will be customised to the individual but is likely to include things like portfolio reviews, photography assignments and critique of the images produced. One-to-one sessions via phone or skype to discuss your photography goals. If appropriate providing printed notes to assist you.

I am aiming to formally launch this later in the year as a paid service. Prior to that I need to refine my procedures and techniques for offering remote mentoring. I am looking for two or three people – who are not local to me – who would like to try out this kind of mentoring / training. If you are interested please email me and let me know what area(s) of your photography you would like help with.

The sorts of areas that would work well for this include:

learning a new photography or post-production skill
preparing a panel of images for a distinction
preparing to shoot your first wedding
making the right choices when upgrading your camera kit

For this trial I can’t promise to work with everyone who contacts me but I will try offer as much of the mentoring as possible for free. I can’t promise to do everything you ask on that basis – however if I do need to charge this will be agreed in advance and there will be no obligation to take up anything that isn’t free.

Forthcoming Events

Friday, 15 May 2015 – Splash, Bang, Wallop!

FH0515Z-Z00001

Location: Ian’s Studio
Time: 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Price: £20

This will be another of our very popular table-top nights. Using high-speed photography techniques that will work with any camera that can do exposures of 1sec or longer. We will look at a number of high-speed photography themes including ways to capture splashes and to photograph exploding balloons.

You will need a tripod for this event. If you have one please bring it along. If you don’t I have a few spare tripods at the studio that you can borrow for the evening.

Price £20

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

Saturday, 16 May 2015 – Lightroom CC/6 Upgrade Workshop

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Location: Ian’s Studio
Time: 1:30 PM – 3:30 PM
Price: £35

Not sure whether it is worth upgrade to the new version of Lightroom? And if you are going to upgrade do you want to go with the CC version or the boxed LR6?

If you want to get to understand what has changed in the new version of Lightroom and want to make informed choices about upgrading coming along to this half day workshop where I will go through the details of what it probably the biggest change to Lightroom since it was first released.

The workshop is aimed at those who have an existing working knowledge of the product. You don’t need to be an expert. We will concentrate on the areas which have changed but almost certainly we will look at some of the features that have been there in previous versions.

Price: £35 (Maximum places: 10)
Printed Notes will be provided.

Please book via my website: http://www.ians-studio.co.uk/events/lightroom-cc6-upgrade-workshop/

PLEASE NOTE BOOKING FOR THIS EVENT WILL CLOSE AT 23:59pm on TUESDAY 12th MAY.

Sunday, 31 May 2015 – In-Depth Art Nude Course

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Location: Ian’s Studio
Time: 3:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Price: £299

This six session course covers all the essential techniques you need to create great studio based art nude images. In each session we will work with a different art nude model. The course runs on Sunday Afternoons starting on 31st May 2015.

Over the course of the six weeks we will look at the following:

Lo-key (black background) – including one-light and sandwich lighting set-ups
Grey background work – with a greater emphasis on the way the model poses
Bodyscapes and body parts
Working with props
Silhouettes
Erotic nude

No previous experience of studio work is required.

In order to give participants the opportunity of working with different models on different techniques, rather than spending a whole session on one of the above topics, we will look at three topics each session, returning to some of them multiple times throughout the course. This will give you the chance to photograph each model in three different lighting set-ups.

In each session we will introduce two or three new lighting set-ups. Each lighting set-up will be fully documented with lighting diagrams, behind the scene shots and example images. So that you can use the notes to recreate the set-ups in the future.

In order to improve your studio skills, course participants will be encouraged to help set-up lights and backgrounds.

The course requires a minimum of FOUR photographers to run at the advertised price. The maximum number of photographers on this course will be seven.

Price: £299

Please book via my website: http://www.ians-studio.co.uk/events/in-depth-art-nude-course/

Photo of the Day

POTD (12 years ago today) Sat, 10 May 2003: Camera Timing Oddity

Canon EOS5 Camera

TWELVE YEARS AGO TODAY…. (Plus a 2015 Update!)

I collected my Canon EOS 5 film camera from Jessops today. It had been in for repair for the last 9 weeks. I’d bought this camera second hand last September and this is the second time it has been back. The first time for a sticky mode dial. This time because it appeared to have some timing problems – I’d noticed that some shots were in explicably under exposed. When I tried timing the shutter times I’d noticed something odd – at “15 sec” exposure was anything between 15 and 20 seconds. So back in March the camera when to be checked out. Today I went to collect it. In the shop I tested the 15 second exposure – it was 16 seconds. A 20 second exposure was actually 23 seconds. The odd thing was that when we compared this with another EOS 5 in the shop – it was also out by the same amount!! Are all canons this far out on their long exposures?

2015 Update:
I had forgotten all about this event from 12 years ago until I was preapring this POTD for reposting. I’ve just tested my digital 5D mark II. The ’15 sec’ exposure is consistently 16 secs. And the 30 sec exposure is 32 secs. So after all this time canon are still producing cameras with in acurate timings…. or are they? Let’s think about this for a moment. A full ‘stop’ is a halving or doubling of the light. If we go from 1sec. The full stops should be 2sec, 4sec, 8sec, 16sec and 32sec. So in reality the timings are correct but the labels we give to them by convention (ie 15sec and 30sec) are wrong.

PLEASE NOTE: This is not a source of free photographs.
This photograph is (c) Ian M Butterfield. All rights are reserved. No use Is permitted (including non-commercial use) without prior permission. If you wish to use any of my photographs please ask first.

Image Reference: EV0510B-D00125

Stock Sales

For those who are interested in Stock Photography here’s some information about some of the strange and not so strange sales that I have made.

SALE 22 Dec 2014: Cash in Hand

UK Money held in a hand

NUMBER OF SALES TO DATE: 7
SOLD VIA: Alamy
LICENCE: Rights Managed

People sometimes ask me why I spend time doing my “Photos of the Day”. This image makes a very useful case study.

In 2008 I deiced to have a go at a 365 challenge. Take a photograph every day and post it on-line. On January 3rd (as usual) I was concentrating on doing my finances. And I used this as the inspiration for my POTD for that day. I shot it as a money related stock image… and the next day it was heading to the stock libraries.

Some five and half years later it sold, and then resold and it has now sold for a total of SEVEN times. And judging by the sales data all the sales are for the same client who has decided to reuse the image and thus they have to pay again. This is the advantage of Rights Managed licences (from a photographer’s perspective) everytime the client wants to use the image again they have to pay again!

So going back to the original question. Without having the impetus of doing the Photo of the Day / 365 challenge I would never have got round to creating the image. Had I not created the image I would never have had these FIVE sales. In short: 365 challenges = inspiration = discipline = money!

19 Aug 2013
Country: United Kingdom
Usage: Editorial
Media: Newspaper – national
Print run: up to 750,000
Placement: Inside and online
Image Size: 1/4 page
Start: 01 June 2013
End: 02 June 2013
One use in a single editorial or advertorial article used within print and /or web versions, with re-use of the article in other titles or web versions within the same newspaper group. Digital use includes archive rights for the lifetime of the article.

29 Oct 2013
Country: United Kingdom
Usage: Editorial
Media: Newspaper – national
Print run: up to 750,000
Placement: Inside and online
Image Size: 1/4 page
Start: 01 August 2013
End: 02 August 2013
One use in a single editorial or advertorial article used within print and /or web versions, with re-use of the article in other titles or web versions within the same newspaper group. Digital use includes archive rights for the lifetime of the article.

31 Jan 2014
Country: United Kingdom
Usage: Editorial
Media: Newspaper – national
Print run: up to 750,000
Placement: Inside and online
Image Size: 1/4 page
Start: 01 December 2013
End: 02 December 2013
One use in a single editorial or advertorial article used within print and /or web versions, with re-use of the article in other titles or web versions within the same newspaper group. Digital use includes archive rights for the lifetime of the article.

29 May 2014
Country: United Kingdom
Usage: Editorial
Media: Newspaper – national
Print run: up to 750,000
Placement: Inside and online
Image Size: 1/4 page
Start: 01 April 2014
End: 02 April 2014
One use in a single editorial or advertorial article used within print and /or web versions, with re-use of the article in other titles or web versions within the same newspaper group. Digital use includes archive rights for the lifetime of the article.

25 Nov 2014
Country: United Kingdom
Usage: Editorial
Media: Newspaper – national
Print run: up to 750,000
Placement: Inside and online
Image Size: 1/4 page
Start: 01 October 2014
End: 02 October 2014
One use in a single editorial or advertorial article used within print and /or web versions, with re-use of the article in other titles or web versions within the same newspaper group. Digital use includes archive rights for the lifetime of the article.

22 Dec 2014
Sold Twice – for the same amount and with both sales with the same details:
Country: United Kingdom
Usage: Editorial
Media: Newspaper – national
Print run: up to 750,000
Placement: Inside and online
Image Size: 1/4 page
Start: 01 November 2014
End: 02 November 2014
One use in a single editorial or advertorial article used within print and /or web versions, with re-use of the article in other titles or web versions within the same newspaper group. Digital use includes archive rights for the lifetime of the article.

Alamy URL: http://www.alamy.com/image-details-popup.asp?Imageid=%7BF0434CCB-2DB2-494B-894A-DE6CF9842304%7D

Image Reference: FA0103A-E00010