VSP Workshops Blog

The crazy Texan supplementing our models' wages...

Ah yes…that time of year again.  The big question is – how many costumes can a sane person photograph before they start to rock back and forth in the corner of the room, afraid to even look at their laptop for fear of seeing another mask. I think the answer is five days worth…no more and no less!

I was really impressed by the images produced by this year’s participants.  If anyone is ever curious about the value of doing a workshop – well yes it’s what you can gain from your instructor – but equally as valuable, is what you learn from your fellow photographers.  Seeing how others interpret the same scene – and often in so many interesting and original ways – is really very helpful. (more…)

Image by Lars Lindholm

Well perhaps ‘storm evading’ would be a more accurate description of what happened in Tuscany.  Every morning of the workshop, I’d hear somebody on CNN talking about the severe weather system currently pushing across Italy.  Given the forecasts, we were actually very fortunate with the weather.  From a photographer’s perspective, the one thing we hoped for on the workshop was dramatic weather.  Grey, flat light was a no-no, but if it had to be bad, we wanted storm clouds and drama – rather like a scene from Independence Day only without the Armageddon bit afterwards.

Worth thinking about this for a moment – you’re a landscape photographer, you’ve got a trip planned, and your watching the weather forecast which hardly looks promising.  It’s probably happened to many of you, and here at VSP, it’s obviously something we have to pay close attention to when running a photo tour.  Now from a workshop perspective, we obviously want things to be as fun and pleasant as possible, so calm and pleasant weather is always preferable.  However, getting wet and muddy aside, from a purely photographic perspective, bad weather is by no means a sign that your planned landscape shoot is going to be ruined – far from it.

My personal view is this – if it’s raining, work with what you have – don’t turn up to your landscape location with a view of making macro shots of sunflowers against a blue sky, when what you really should be capitalising on, is what nature is throwing at you.  If it’s raining, better that it’s pouring down than a modest drizzle.  If there’s no sun, better black clouds, then a blanket of grey.  It’s all about taking advantage of what nature throws at you – and quite often when nature hurls a curve ball at you, you can end up making some pretty spectacular shots. (more…)

Remember I promised we’d be doing something called ‘Workshop Diaries’?  Well man of my word that I am, here’s the first instalment.  Today was the first day of our now annual Nikon Lighting Workshop, with Joe McNally and his bag of tricks at the teaching helm.  The will be the third year we’ve run this workshop with Joe now, and I’m glad to say, it’s a real blast each year.  Great group of people from all over the world attending – Mexico, Germany, Holland, USA and Australia. (more…)

Hello Everybody – drum rolls, the anticipation, take the phone off the hook…life will never be the same again….
I suppose in the grand scheme of things, VSP are a little late getting into the blog swing of things.  I’ve personally been reading a number of very interesting blogs over the last few years, and often wondered how we could make our own contribution to the bottomless pit of cyber self-publishing.
I take my hat off to Mr McNally and his very enjoyable blog – funny, informative, and well, really just like sitting down next to him for a chat.  Note to self – be funny, be refreshing, fun and informative, don’t post too often….

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