Winter Landscapes in the White Peak

Peak District landscape photography course in Lathkill Dale © Chris James

This course has now taken place, but you can see details of all our other courses here.

Saturday January 20th – 10.00am to 4.30pm. £99.00 per person. 

This course is being held in one of the Peak District‘s most beautiful valleys, which is also a National Nature Reserve. Lathkill Dale is beautiful at any time of year, but in winter the bare trees and abundant water give it a special stark quality which can produce beautiful images. The course will run until after sunset, so it will be a great chance to experience taking pictures in the low light conditions using long exposures.

This intermediate level course will be limited to just four photographers – so everyone will receive plenty of individual attention and get their questions answered. 

Please contact us if you would like us to send you a booking form.

We will start the day in the lower part of Lathkill Dale, photographing the beautiful series of weirs on the River Lathkill, which are perfect for practising shooting moving water using different shutter speeds. A tripod will be needed for this (but we have some that you can borrow if you don’t already have one of your own), and we also have some sets of filters (polarising, neutral density and graduated neutral density) that you can borrow to enable you to get some nice long exposures to blur the movement of the water. These are some photographs taken our client Andrew Procter on a previous course here:

We will break for lunch in a local pub (not included in the course price) or you can of course bring a packed lunch if you prefer. The pub has the advantage of having toilets (there are no facilities in Lathkill Dale itself) and we will also be able to review the morning’s work on the laptop while we are indoors.

Flooding in Lathkill Dale. Photo © Chris JamesAfter lunch, we will go further up the valley where the river provides plenty of photographic potential. Lathkill Dale often floods in winter, and if there has been plenty of rain, the flooded areas will provide some great reflections for us to capture. Later in the afternoon, as mist starts to form over the water, the light has a wonderful ethereal quality to it which can produce some fantastic images. We will have to walk just over 1 mile to get to the best waterfall (shown at the top of this page), but the walking is mainly on a good track, and fairly level. It should be well within the ability of most people, and it’s certainly worth the effort!

Winter landscape photography in the Peak District. Photo © Chris JamesIf the weather is fine, the afternoon sun will illuminate the limestone cliffs which tower over where the waterfall is, providing yet more photographic opportunities. The course will finish at 4.30pm – just after sunset time.

As this is an intermediate – rather than beginners’ level – course, it is important that you are already familiar with the basics of photography and how to use your camera in other than the “all-automatic” mode. If you are not confident about how to use shutter speeds, lens apertures and ISO to control exposure, and how to focus your camera, please come on one of our beginners’ level digital photography courses first, where we teach those skills.

The course is suitable for any type of digital stills camera that allows you to control the settings – particularly shutter speeds and apertures. The most suitable are digital slr or mirrorless cameras that have interchangeable lenses, but compact and bridge cameras may also be suitable (though some have certain limitations due to their small sensor sizes, and whether or not filters can be attached to them). Please contact us for advice if you are unsure whether your camera is suitable.

Subjects covered on this course may include:

  • composition for picture impact
  • creative use of lens apertures, shutter speeds and different types of lenses
  • how and when to use different types of filters on your lenses
  • how to get the colours looking the way you want them in your photos
  • tips for shooting in RAW format for maximum quality
  • shooting in fully manual (M) mode
  • correct use of tripods

Please contact us to request a booking form, or if you need any further information about this course. 

We also run landscape and beginners’ level courses in other local areas. See here for details of all our other digital photography courses near Sheffield and in the Peak District.