I have created a set on Flickr for any shots of budding photographers I take during the courses, so hopefully the set will continue to grow as I run more courses.

You can see from the pictures that the area we go to is great for photography, and that unfortunately rain puts a bit of damper on it (literally), but so far I’ve had no complaints.

I have one more course this year, this weekend (23/11/2008, places are still available) and will get them going again in the new year. I am also going to be arranging a few photography walks where anyone can come along, it’s not a course, just a day out taking pictures. I’ll answer any questions of course, but just getting a day out to practise taking pictures will be a huge benefit to any photographer.

If you are interested in the courses or the possible photography walks then sign up to the newsletter, I will only send you emails with relevent things in them, they won’t be every day or every week, jsut as and when there is information that I think will be useful.

Anyway, take a look at the rest of the pictures here:

I have only just realised there was a problem and it looked like the site was gone. All fixed now and sorry about the balls up!

I am using a free newsletter service provided by Zookoda but it will make it easy for me to let you know of future dates and locations withouth having to go through all my emails from people who have expressed interest in any of the courses I run.

The latest dates are:

Sunday 26th October

Sunday 9th November

Sunday 23rd November

The courses are based near Oldham (which is near Manchester) in a little place called Park Bridge.

I currently haven’t found a reliable solution for purchasing the course online (I’ve had problems with the previous solutions) so if you want to book a place on the course you can confirm your booking by sending ??30 via paypal to gaz@gazraa.com or contact me via the contact page on this site and give me your name, email and phone number and you can pay on the day. Please only book a place if you are definitely going to make it, as other people may miss out if you don’t turn up.

Please bear in mind, I do need a minimum of around 8 people to run these courses, and the spaces are limited to a maximum of 15 people per course.

If I can find a better booking solution before the course dates I will get it up and running on the site.

Any questions, just contact me via the web site contact form.

It only costs ?30 and spaces are limited to a maximum of 15 people. It is aimed at beginners, but I hope to run more intermediate and advanced courses at a later date depending on the success of the basics course.

The course will be run in Park Bridge, surrounded by trees, streams, and open space in the grounds of an old mill giving plenty of opportunity for various types of photography including landscape, nature, wildlife (hopefully), architectural and portraits if we have some willing models amongst the group.

The course will be largely practical, with a little theory and explanation along the way but the idea is to get you all taking pictures and learning how to make better use of your camera. You will learn about Aperture, Shutter Speed, ISO, White Balance and how they affect the image, and you will also look at composition techniques to improve the image.

The course will run from 10am - 4.30pm and food will be provided at lunchtime, although you are more then welcome to bring your own or visit the local tea rooms if you wish.

You will need to bring your own camera, it doesn’t matter if it’s a basic point and shoot or an advanced DSLR, the fundamentals apply to them all. Just make sure your battery is charged, and you have backups or bring your charger too. Also make sure you have a clean memory card and spares, just in case you carried away with your photos. You will be responsible for your own equipment and I take no responsibility for loss or damage of your equipment during the day.

COURSE NOW FINISHED

NOTE: I am having problems with my site shopping cart plugin and I apologise for this. While I am sorting this out, if you want to book a place on the course, please use paypal and send ?30 to gaz@gazraa.com with an email giving me your contact details including a phone number. I will try and make sure that I keep the places left listed in the comments on here. I hope to have the shopping cart sorted very soon.

It only costs ?30 and spaces are limited to a maximum of 15 people. It is aimed at beginners, but I hope to run more intermediate and advanced courses at a later date depending on the success of the basics course.

The course will be run in Park Bridge, surrounded by trees, streams, and open space in the grounds of an old mill giving plenty of opportunity for various types of photography including landscape, nature, wildlife (hopefully), architectural and portraits if we have some willing models amongst the group.

The course will be largely practical, with a little theory and explanation along the way but the idea is to get you all taking pictures and learning how to make better use of your camera. You will learn about Aperture, Shutter Speed, ISO, White Balance and how they affect the image, and you will also look at composition techniques to improve the image.

The course will run from 10am - 4.30pm and food will be provided at lunchtime, although you are more then welcome to bring your own or visit the local tea rooms if you wish.

You will need to bring your own camera, it doesn’t matter if it’s a basic point and shoot or an advanced DSLR, the fundamentals apply to them all. Just make sure your battery is charged, and you have backups or bring your charger too. Also make sure you have a clean memory card and spares, just in case you carried away with your photos. You will be responsible for your own equipment and I take no responsibility for loss or damage of your equipment during the day.

COURSE NOW FINISHED

UPDATE: There appears to have been a problem with my old shopping cart system, and the item said it was sold out when it in fact wasn’t (at the time of writing this) so I am updating the cart to solve this issue. Please use the options above to buy the course and book a place on it.

This shot was taken In Turkey while I was on holiday, and as you can probably guess, I was on a boat when I took it. This was taken in the morning when the water on the lake was very calm, but being in Turkey in the height of summer (August) means that the sun was very harsh and bright.

I saw this potential shot, which is actually very simple, not a lot of detail, but wonderful colours and a nice recession in the mountains in the background gradually fading out into the distance.

So what did I have to think about before I took this?

Well, first of all, I was moving on a boat, so I had to make sure the shutter speed was suitably fast to prevent any blur. Fortunately, being a very bright day this meant I could still use a fairly small aperture giving me the large depth of field needed for landscapes. I ended up using 1/640th of a second and f8. I could probably have got away with a smaller aperture but I kept things at what I think is a good compromise to make sure I got a totally sharp picture.

I was also using a super wide angle lense. This was taken with my Tamron 11-18mm lense which is great for landscapes, and I set it as wide as I could at 11mm.

I hand held the shot, being on a boat with a chugging engine I thought that resting the camera on the side of the boat might have introduced further vibration so I just held the camera with both hands braced against the cabin of the boat. As the shutter speed was nice and fast, this wasn’t going to be a problem.

So I got the shot, and a few others from different angles, zooms and compositions, and was pleased with the result. I have cropped it and tweaked the colours a little using Adobe Lightroom, but I really didn’t do a great deal on the computer.

I am going back this year, with a different camera this time, so we’ll see what sort of shots I can get this time. I can’t wait!

I listen to the TWIP podcast, a great podcast which covers relevant subjects to photographers as well as lots of banter between several experienced photographers usually revolving around the Canon and Nikon battle… Sony will be triumphant by the way!!….. but I digress. Anyway, they are always praising the Canon G9 for being a very competent little camera, and as I spotted a Canon G9 on amazon.co.uk for a decent price I decided to get one.

So why is a digital compact great, and why spend your money on another thing to carry around? Well not only is it small and easy to carry around it gives you a lot more freedom to take photos. You don’t have to worry whether you have the right lens on or not, it can be held at all sorts of angles that a DSLR would make awkward, you have all the manual controls you could need (depending on the features of the camera) and it makes you look less of a ‘threat’ to those people who think all photographers are some sort of terrorist, so you get a bit less hassle…. usually.

Ok, so it’s easier to carry around, but DLSRs take better quality images don’t they? Well, yes they do most of the time, but there are several digital compacts that can give some of the low end DSLRs a run for their money when shooting at a low ISO especially if all you are going to do with your images is put them on the web or print them up to A4 size.

I think the main reason why a Digital Compact is a great thing to have is that you can carry it around everywhere. Just stick it your pocket or bag and you’ll have it for that moment when you need it. A DSLR can be too big and bulky to take everywhere and quite often you’ll leave it at home, and then wish you hadn’t, so having a decent compact to hand will give you those extra opportunities to take pictures.

If you see a good location you can take a few pictures and then plan to go back with all your DSLR gear for specific shots. You can even use it to set up your DSLR shots. Check out this post on Strobist about how a digital compact like the G9 could be the new photographers polaroid camera.

In fact, I am so impressed with the G9 that it will be the only camera I take on holiday this year giving me a lot less to lug about, it’ll be good enough for the type of photography I will be doing (I’ve been there before so I know what there is to take pictures of) and it gives me more hand luggage space for Duty Free Jack Daniels!!

So, if you have a digital compact, make sure it’s with you all times, you never know when that photo opportunity will present itself!

So, I thought I’d post a few links to some other web sites that not only have great images, but also have a great approach to photography.

The first is a site called sisters by a Photographer called Jason Lee. I saw a post about his work over on Strobist (another excellent site) and was impressed by the images of his two young daughters, who are not only cute kids, but seem very willing to pose for their dad in all sorts of fancy dress and other get ups. The images are great, lighting is superb as is the approach and theme of the collection. I wonder how happy they will be when their dear old dad brings out these pictures on their 18th birthdays in front of all their friends!

Next comes the site of Rebekka Gu?leifsd?ttir and in particular her self portraits. Not only are they great photos, but to be the person taking the picture too (obviously done by remote trigger or self timer) and setting up the shot takes a lot of skill.

My final link is to The Manipulator. No it’s not some freakish robot sent back from the future to alter the human race, it’s to the excellent work of Jill Greenberg who uses the digital darkroom (the computer) to produce fantastic images. This is top end commercial work and you can tell by the people she has got to photograph and the commercial work she has done that she is definitely a talent.

So there are three inspirational sites for you to look at. Hopefully you too will be inspired by them. I’d like to hear about photos that have inspired you recently, maybe we can build a little ‘inspiration’ section of this site.

Could you please share some info regarding the different lenses.

Now, lenses cover a huge area and can be quite technical when it comes to saying why one lens might be better than another. Plus there are lots of manufacturers of lenses, some will be available for some makes of cameras, others won’t so that adds extra complications.

If you want to find out how a camera lens is made, then I found this page which explains it.

So to start with, what are the different types of lenses. Well the two main types are prime or zoom lenses.

Prime Lenses

These are a fixed focal length, so there’s no zooming in and out with these. They are often a better quality lens optically than a zoom of similar length, and can quite often be expensive to buy due to the higher quality.

So why would you want a fixed focal length lens? Doesn’t that make it more restrictive?

Well, yes, it is more restrictive as you have to physically move to frame your picture, but the improvements in image quality and the reduced weight (usually) of a prime lens over a zoom make it worth while.

Zoom Lenses

These are lenses that give you a range of focal lengths. The term zoom lens doesn’t always mean you will be able to magnify the image, as you can get wide angle zooms with very short focal lengths, only a telephoto zoom will allow you ‘bring the subject closer’. So I guess that could be a third type, telephoto.

f numbers

A lens will have an f number. For a prime lens you will get a single f number, whereas a zoom lens may give you a range of f numbers, but it can still have a single f number. This f number is the maximum aperture you can use, as in the widest hole you can set of light to get in. When you buy your camera you may get a kit lens with it, usually a zoom lens. Let’s say with your shiny new DSLR you get an 18-75mm zoom lens. This means that the lens will go from 18mm to 75mm which is a good range for starters.? On this lens you may see it has something like f3.5-5.6 on it too. This is the aperture range that lens has and means that when the focal length is set to 18mm you will be able to use a maximum aperture (f number) of 3.5 but when you use the 75mm focal length you will only be able to use a maximum aperture of 5.6.

So what makes a lens a good one?

There are various factors which make lenses thought of as good. First off, and most importantly, will be optical quality. As the glass used in a lens is not flat, all sorts of problems can occur such as distortion when light passes through it.

This is when the image gets distorted in an unnatural way. Or certain portions of the image appear more distorted than others, usually nearer the edges. I won’t bore you with all the technical details of distortion (mainly because I don’t know them), but the better lenses have less distortion present, resulting in a better image. Better quality glass also produces better colour in your images, and will reduce the chance of getting a nasty lens flare in your image.

A better lens will be one that is able to focus on the subject quickly. At the cheaper end of the scale, lenses can take a while to focus on a subject and will often ‘hunt’ to find a focal point. Hunting is the term used when you see the lens going backwards a forwards several times until it finds something to lock onto. With the higher spec lenses, you usually get a wider aperture (smaller f number) which allows more light into the lens while it’s focussing and therefore helps the lens focus quicker. That is why you see all these sports photographers or nature photographers using these big expensive lenses. They need to be big to help get that wide aperture so they focus on the subject quickly, very important for the sports or wildlife.

So should I buy the cheapest lens I can find or save my pennies?

Well, for lenses, the saying ‘you get what you pay for’ is certainly applicable. You may think that buying a cheap lens that gives you a nice long focal length to get things nice and close is a good idea. I’m not saying don’t buy the cheap ones, you just need to know the limitations of that lens. If it’s all you can afford then that is what you’ll have to get. It may be very slow to use, as in slow to find it’s focal point, it may be made of cheap materials and may not stand up to knocks or the internals may prove problematic after some time, or the optical quality may be poor.

If you think about it, you tend to change your lenses less than you change the camera body, so it pays to save up and buy the absolute best lens you can afford. If you are getting a new camera and a lens, consider getting a slightly less expensive camera and spend more on a better quality lens, the rewards of having good glass are much more than having all the latest gadgets on the camera body.

Now the subject of lenses is a big one. I will try and sort some images out that explains some of the good and bad points about lenses so you can see for yourself what the differences maybe.

If you are considering buying a new lens to add to your kit lens to give more range or more flexibility then do your research. Try the second hand market to get a better lens for your money or ask other photographers what they use and look at their images so you can compare them.

Remember that your camera will require a specific fitting. Each brand will have it’s own fitting so make sure any lenses you try or buy are made for your fitting otherwise you may damage both the lens and the camera.

I hope that helps a bit Shani, but no doubt this will generate more questions which I will do my best to answer.