I took the plunge a couple of weeks ago and signed up for a Coastal Landscape photography course. There is an enormous industry out there of people offering to take your photography to a new level and in many cases with not that much to demonstrate that their photography is at any special level. I've always viewed such offerings with a degree of skepticism. Out of the blue, when visiting the delightful seaside town of North Berwick, I was literally stopped dead in my tracks while passing the local a
rt shop. In the window was a huge framed print of the image to the left. I just stood and stared. It was a Sunday and the shop was shut so i did what anyone would do, photographed it on the iPhone and took a note of his name to investigate further. The photographer is Colin Homes and when I discovered that he was running courses, I was hooked. Here was someone taking images I'd kill to have taken and ready and willing to show me how. The booking was made and I duely spent a fantastic day with him a couple of weeks ago.
The day began with an overview of his workflow, a little on photoshop and an insight into creating the best possible file from which to work. After that we headed off, just two of us on the course that day, to the coast not half an hour's walk from the town. The next four hours or so were spent taking photographs with exactly the right balance of guidance from Colin. Never pushy, never intrusive, just there when required. The input for me was balance between a little technique and a greater part of compositional suggestion. We're all different, but for me it was spot on.
We returned in time to base to have a look at our output and for each of us one file recived the Colin treatment using Photoshop CS5. Colin took us through the inital RAW import and manipulation then a whistlestop tour of using layer masks, particularly the use of multiple gradient masks. This gave each one of us a final file demonstrating all the taught elements.
This process illustrated a number of important points in the teaching and learning process. The teacher must for me have credibility, they must be able to pass on their knowledge ina way that enables me to learn and finally I need to enjoy the process. I had a superb day, thoroughly enjoyed myself and learned loads into the bargain. Almost more importantly, I have continued to learn from the day and my own process has changed forever. Can't wish for more than that
This weekend I finally took the plunge and tried to sort out keeping warm, dry and comfortable while waiting around for that shaft of sunlight. Courtesy of 
They say, like with tree rings, that you can estimate the length of a photographic career by the number of bags. This seems to hold true and many of us have a cupboard like the one above. What stands out here is that this follows the ‘clear out to end all clear outs’ last year in which the pages of Ebay were littered with cast offs, mistaken buys and those that seemed perfect at the time but just never seemed to get used. I wondered if some form of retrospective might enable a rounded view of the current state of play. The cupboard isn’t even as full as it might be. there is a Think Tank holster in the car and a Lowepro Rover in the post. There is also of course the usual set of saved web pages listing what may be the next perfect bag or the next mistake. Some things hold true – buy cheap, buy twice is one. there really is no point messing about with cheap fall apart bags as you end up spending more in the end. There is also the very clear rule forgotten by many that there is no such thing as the perfect bag. The best we can ever get is perfect for that particular time, place, weather and equipment.This of course the golden rule that gives us licence to keep buying more and more as each day is different, each location specific and we of course also change our cameras. In episode two we’ll have a look at the current Baglist.
Thanks to exceptionally speedy dispatch and distribution from 
Today I came across the website of Ted Leeming and Morag Patterson