Saturday March 28th – 10.30am to 6.00pm. £99.00 per person.
Only 1 place still available.
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 some exceptionally striking images. The course will run until shortly before sunset, so it will also be a great chance to experience taking pictures in 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 a booking form for this course.
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.
After lunch, we will have a couple of different options. One is to go further up the valley where the river provides plenty of photographic potential. Lathkill Dale often floods in the wetter months, 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 really magical 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 on a good track, and fairly level. It should be well within the ability of most people, and it’s certainly worth the effort!
Alternatively, if the sky is clear, we can go to the site of a well preserved disused lead mine nearby. There will be an 78% full moon on this day, and it will be rising just around 1.00pm. This will give us the chance to photograph it together will the engine houses, chimneys, headstocks and some twisted trees at the mine while they are still lit by daylight. The mine is located high on the limestone plateau, so it is an excellent location for photography during golden hour and at sunset as well. The course will run until 6.00pm, which is shortly before sunset.
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 – especially shutter speeds and apertures. Interchangeable lens digital slr or mirrorless cameras are the best options, 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 or not your camera is suitable.
Topics 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.