wild coast and winter swan photography workshop

Wild Coast and Winter Swans Photography Workshop

Sat 15th Jan 2011 | West Lancs | For 6 students | £50

Twice a day this canvas is wiped clean, the memory of the previous few hours erased, ready for nature’s next play. The sea-washed sands re-form, patterned by the tide’s dance and the blow of winter’s wind.

What better place to spend a chill day, exploring the new compositions, journeying through the interplay of time and tide with our cameras and creating lasting memories of these ephemeral moments.

A flock of Dunlin wheels over the incoming tide

Along the way we’ll refine our vision, seeking new ways to story-tell, new ways to capture the tale of this ever changing coast. Would you like to join us? Would you like to sharpen your style and expand your compositional vocabulary, becoming more familiar with the language of diagonals, subject placement, focal points and skylines along the way?

Neolithic footprints of an Auroch on the beach

I’ll share my favourite techniques with you, giving you the ‘inside track’ on shooting with anend-use in mind, giving your photography even more purpose and drive.

Hopefully, if the conditions are right we’ll get the rare opportunity to photograph prehistoric footprints, laid down by our ancestors several thousand years ago, we may even find Auroch and wolf prints to work with! Together we’ll work on a project linking the old with the fleetingly new sand patterns.

The afternoon will be spent working with the birds of Martin Mere, tightening our grasp of shallow focus techniques, capturing the whole story in just three shots and investigating the important area of critical sharpness with longer lenses and telephoto zooms.

To conclude we’ll stake a place in the Swan Link Hide and await the arrival of a thousand Whooper Swans at our feet. Amidst the chaos and blinding white of the sea of birds we’ll work hard to isolate details, to find structure and form, creating abstracts from bill and wing. We’ll learn how to stay with one bird, waiting for the vital moment when our photo will come to life, capturing the height of the feeding frenzy, watching tempers flare and passions explode right in front of our cameras.

whooper swan fighting

The Wild Coast and Winter Swans is a popular workshop, kicking off the year in good style and blowing away the creative cobwebs on the sea breeze.