Out of my comfort zone

Aside from family photos, I mainly take street and travel pictures, in fact even my travel pictures are largely people based. I want to continue to develop technically and whilst I have a high level of technical knowledge, I am trying to learn off-camera flash and improve my skills with post processing, but I also have interest in trying some new areas and developing creatively. Branching out into other types of photography.

I generally learn by reading and lots of trial and error, but I have really been wanting to learn fine art landscape photography, an area in which I have zero experience, so looked for an experienced landscape photographer who was prepared to join me for a day and share knowledge. This week I spent a day with Paul Sanders. The day took me well out of my comfort zone, as expected and by the evening I had learnt massively and had enjoyed an excellent experience. The landscape learning curve is big, during the day I feel I had a crash course and most importantly, now have a framework within which to work.

I think training is so important and one-on-one or small groups face-to-face with somebody whose work that I admire or appreciate has been really worthwhile for me. Over a period of I guess twenty plus years, I have spent a small amount of hours with a few photographers who, along with Paul, I consider to be outstanding artists and teachers - Brian Bower, Bob Barclay, Robin Sinha and some highly educational conversations with darkroom guru Gordon Bishop.

Paul allowed me the freedom to do what I wanted but with the inspiration and guidance essential for learning. The few images I have shared from Dungeness, contained in the gallery linked here are hopefully just the first steps, I have tried to capture something of the bleak area and atmosphere.

All images are taken with my Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II, 12mm f2 and 25mm f1.8 Olympus lenses, Lee ND filters and - something I never thought I would use - a Mefoto Globetrotter Carbon Fibre tripod!