Isle of Harris and Lewis photography workshop February 2023<br/>

*One of the workshop attendees on Traigh Mhangurstadh taking in the beauty, drama and solitude the location offers.*

I have recently returned from leading a photography workshop on the incredible Isle of Harris and Lewis. It was a great week with changeable weather which brought with it some challenges, opportunities and some fine winter light in equal measure. We encountered wind, rain, blustery showers, rainbows, flat grey skies, clear blue skies and transient light throughout the week. The aims of my workshops are to help each individual to develop their own creativity, vision and style through teaching a variety of skills and techniques both in the field and in post processing.

As a very quiet, introverted person, the Islands for me offer a sense of peace and serenity that is so difficult to find elsewhere. They allow me to immerse myself in the landscape and forget the stresses and strains that come with daily life. I like to think my images are a personal statement about me and my vision, they reflect my way of seeing and my connection to the landscape in that particular moment. A viewpoint that may or may not be shared by others but I shoot for me and photograph what inspires me and I encourage my clients do the same.

The weather is something we cannot control and whilst we can plan it doesn’t mean that the light will appear when and where we want or expect it to. For me this means choosing, developing and working on creating a strong composition is every bit as important as the light we may or may not capture.

My thinking behind this, particularly on a workshop setting is we have a relatively short period of time at many of the locations we visit and given the Outer Hebridean weather we cannot always guarantee great light. In fact we could spend 5 days battling wind, rain and dull grey skies. Thankfully we didn’t on this occasion. The one thing we can work on no matter is composition and developing our understanding of why an image works or doesn’t work. Within composition we covered seeing distractions at point of capture rather than in post, subject placement, leading lines, motion and geometry, transitions, flow, patterns, repetition, perspective, colour palette and tonal response.

Throughout the week we covered:

How we meter the scene in front of us in order to determine if we need to use filters and which filter to use or bracket our images to blend in post if required. I still use graduated filters and will continue to do so as part of my workflow out in the field as they give me what I am looking for, slow me down to enjoy the moment and therefore allow and encourage me to take more care in my compositions.

Choosing shutter speed to capture motion and how different lengths of exposure create a different feel to the images we create. Using our meter readings to work out which strength of neutral density filter we need to give the required exposure time.
Focussing methods for sharpness throughout the frame
Focus stacking and why it may be required at times and how to shoot the required images for stacking
Post processing techniques to get the best from our images

*Dalbeg*

*I covered how we create impact in our images and how we create contrast and luminosity in dull flat light.*
*We use contrast to hold the viewer within the frame and luminosity/ light to lead the viewers eye through the image.*
Whilst not the best image in the world it was one of the first images I set up to demonstrate to one of my clients how we would go about capturing motion in the waves and backwash on the beach. The next wave that came in resulted in the water levels being at my knees and a timely reminder to watch out for rogue waves. Everything got a bit wet but no damage was caused to any of my equipment thankfully!!

During the workshop the group were encouraged to explore and look for things that caught their eye or interested them rather than standing in a group capturing the same scene. Being ourselves and conveying some of that through our work is what keeps us continuing to learn and evolve as photographers, a process that never stands still. Stay true to yourself, what you see and what inspired you to take the image in the first place. Whether that is the wider scene, picking out select elements within the landscape or intimate details.

*Coastline impressions*

Some other creative techniques we covered included ICM (Intentional Camera Movement) which consists of deliberately moving the camera during the exposure to create ethereal, abstract and striking images.

*Feamainn (Seaweed)*

Working in from the wider scene we walk through the landscape picking out a variety of elements and compositions along the way. The intimate details that formed part of our other compositions become subjects in themselves.
By working a location fully we can leave with less chance of regretting not having taken a particular image of our chosen subject. This can help add variety to our portfolio and help us develop our vision and style as we continue to progress and evolve with our photography.

Something else we considered is the importance of refinement and it is key to improving the images we create in order to improve the quality of our output. There are a number of issues that are often apparent with images displayed, particularly on social media. Removal of dust spots, straightening horizons, chromatic aberrations and ensuring we are not creating additional problems such as halos and over sharpening with our post processing. Some of these things are often overlooked in our eagerness to get our images out there when most are very simple fixes and take less than a minute or two to correct. Ensuring we correct these during the processing stage is part of the workflow we covered regularly or indeed prevent them from happening in the first place.