Glencoe photography workshop

 On the weekend of the 5th-7th of February I attended a photography workshop in Glencoe with Bruce Percy.  In case you read no further and just look at the pictures, I will give you the executive summary. It was excellent! So much so, that I have decided to go on one of his 5 day masterclasses when funds permit rather than replace my venerable Canon EOS 350D.  I think that upgrading the photographer will be of much more benefit than upgrading the camera.

There are many people offering photography courses in Scotland and the reason I chose Bruce was, first of all, I love his images (his portfolio is here ).  Secondly, a good teacher must be able to communicate their ideas and from reading Bruce's blog and watching his podcasts, I knew that he could. 

The workshop started at 6 on Friday evening with a session where Bruce talked about his approach to photography and showed us some of his work to illustrate the points.

On Saturday morning we were out in the minibus by 7.30am and got to Lochan na h-Achlaise on Rannoch moor before the sun rose. After a few words of advice and a demonstration of how to use neutral density grad filters to reduce the brightness of the sky, we spread out and started looking for potential images.  I like wide angle images with an interesting object in foreground so I quickly spotted a shot and set it up using the tripod. Bruce had a look at what I was doing and asked me to look at the scene with one eye closed. My interesting foreground became a tangled mess of heather twigs when the 3rd dimension was removed by closing one eye. Bruce suggested a simpler composition and pointed out some features I might want to consider using. I took a number of shots at this spot and this is my favourite. I thought about removing the blue cast from the early morning light but I decided it added to the feeling of cold ( and it was cold!). 

 Lochan na h-Achlaise on Rannoch Moor

Then it was back to the hotel for breakfast and straight back out again. We went to scout out a famous location for pictures of Buachaille Etive Mor with a view to photographing it at dawn on Sunday.  I was amazed how many people were there taking photographs. These weren't just casual tourists either but keen types with tripods and neutral density grads etc.  We struggled to find a place to park. I had always assumed that all these empty parked cars you see at spots like this in the highlands belong to climbers. Not all, it would seem.

After looking at the location for a few minutes, Bruce took as down Glen Etive a bit further to a waterfall that offered some good opportunities for photographs.

 Waterfall in Glen Etive

After I took this shot, Bruce suggested that I look for a more intimate subject as a change from the grand vista and he pointed out a spot on the waterfall that had potential for this. The next photo was the result.

 Glen Etive

After this, any thoughts of going back to the hotel and unwinding were quickly banished. We headed back to the main road and stopped in front of Buachaille Etive Beag. It is not nearly as famous as its bigger brother but as you can see in the photograph below, it looks similar. The sky had now turned to a uniform leaden gray so this image isn't as good as  I would have liked but I do like the foreground in it.

 Buachaille Etive Beag

Still no let up though. Back to the hotel for a 10 minute "comfort break" then off along the road to Ballachulish to catch the sun setting on the Pap of Glencoe across Loch Leven. At one point, I was lying in a shallow bit of the burn to see through the camera which I had as low as the tripod would allow. Good waterproofs kept me dry though although I remembered afterwards that my iPhone was in the pocket in the water. It was fine though. 

The first of the Loch Leven pictures has a good background with the sun shining on the hill. The second has that lovely green, seaweed covered rock in the foreground. The third has a nice clean middle ground. I was tempted to combine these in Photoshop to produce the best possible picture but the scene is what it is so I didn't.

Loch Leven and the Pap of Glencoe

 As the light started to fade we went back to the hotel. No time for lounging in the bar though as we had to review our days images and pick 2 for Bruce to critique and show how he would treat them in photoshop. This was very useful as it verbalized why an image works or doesn't.  I also liked the way Bruce did the photoshop work. I would describe it as an electronic version of what used to be done in the darkroom i.e. cropping and dodging and burning. He doesn't clone things out or make things up. 

After dinner, everyone went to bed early but I stayed up till about midnight reading the paper and having a few glasses of wine. I then decided that I couldn't wait any longer and just had to start processing my images on my laptop with Aperture and Photoshop.  Now I wasn't being a girly swat, I just felt that I had taken a few decent shots and wanted to see what they looked like after the usual processing I do had taken place. I did mean I only got 5 hours sleep before I had to be up to catch the dawn light again.

Unfortunately, Buachaille Etive Mor was covered in cloud so we went back to the Lochan on Rannoch moor.  Here I  saw first hand how a great photographer sees things that lesser mortals don't. I was reasonably happy with the photographs I took ( see below ) but I saw nothing that was a standout, cracking image. Neither did any one else except Bruce. We had all walked past this small piece of ice and didn't see the potential. Bruce borrowed someones camera, got down really low and took this:

Copyright Bruce Percy

Mine are a bit more pedestrian but I still quite like them.

 Lochan on Rannoch Moor and the Black Mount

Lochan on Rannoch Moor and the Black Mount

We than had a late breakfast and a final critique session before heading home. I was a bit distracted while driving home as I kept finding myself looking for compositions in the passing scenery.

Overall, it was a great weekend and I now need to practice what I learned and save the pennies for the 5 day version.

Posted at 06:31PM Feb 21, 2010 by Norman Bews in General  |  Comments[4]