Trips Part 5 - The Workshop days 1 and 2
Ann and I had never really done a workshop. We did a Zoom workshop with Charlie Waite during the COVID lockdown, but that doesn’t really count - there was no field work and it was really discussions about photographs and photography. And as I explained in an earlier blog post, this was our third try for a workshop with Joe Cornish and . . . while he had to cancel at the last moment, we can now say we have finally attended a workshop proper. They’re strange things in some respects, helpful in others. I doubt we will be doing any more, though never say never given there are a few people I would say I would consider doing a workshop if they were the instructor, but that’s really neither here nor there.
What I can say is that we had a really group of colleagues at the workshop and I enjoyed spending time with and getting to know each of them.
Best of all, there was no “that person” who is totally annoying, talking endlessly about themselves or voicing their opinion about what they think of this or that. For that, we were very grateful. Time spent in the vehicles and at dinner (folks mixed and matched seating arrangements for breakfast and dinner, which gave for great variety in topics of discussion) was enjoyable. Everyone had a great sense of humor, which we also greatly appreciated!
When we met up on Monday night, folks were introduced and our workshop leaders, Phil and Astrid, explained how the week was likely to go and . . . save for a few scratched early morning shoots (given the constant heavy overcast and occasional night rains), things went as planned. Phil mentioned that the hard part is often getting started in a workshop, so our first location would be to a well-known site that has a readily available view to photograph, and that we shouldn’t worry about our first photograph - it’s never good.
Except that I quite like the first image I made in the workshop. It certainly wasn’t of the “known view” (the shoreline was crowded with my colleagues and I decided to look elsewhere for an image), so I followed my motto of “turn around 180 degrees and you’ll likely also find an image in that direction.” I did. And it was in keeping with my efforts over the past couple of years to try and make more “landscape” images.
I then decided to wander around an inlet where I found one of the photographs that I consider a Photograph (see the Photographs post). Of course, one doesn’t make just one image of a stunning subject, so I continued to photographically explore the tree that had caught my eye in the first place.
After making a few more images around that location, I decided to backtrack a bit. I passed up “the view” to explore elsewhere, eventually getting back down to the lakeshore. I had an image in my mind I was thinking about making as I approached the waterline, but looked right and decided that I really should make an image of the boathouse. As I’ve said in the past, you don’t expect to make great images of famous subjects, but you have to photograph them anyway. Charlie Waite and other have photographed this boathouse and it truly is a lovely subject in a lovely location (though it appears so small in my version).
That image made, I turned back to the subject that had brought me to this part of the shoreline in the first place. It became the first of several photographs during the next few days where I tried to capture the feeling of the heavy overcast we were to see during much of our workshop (and that we’d experienced in our trip so far). Why one would want to photograph “gloom”? I’m not so sure, but I tried.
Eventually, we moved on to other locations, sometimes for a very short stop (at one, neither Ann nor I made an image), others for longer periods of an hour or even a couple of hours. At one, we were told of a walk that took one up a hill, then back down, to return along the river to our meeting point. Ann and I took our time on the hill approach and tried setting up, and deciding not to make, more than a handful of images. It was very frustrating - beauty, beauty everywhere but not a shot to make. The return route along the river proved more fruitful.
But it drove in the thought that we should have saved ourselves the tiring walk up and down the hill and stayed along the river the whole time, working both sides of it. Sometimes it goes that way.
I did, however, make a short stop on the way back to our vehicle to photograph a group of mushrooms for the second time this trip.
Our afternoon stop entailed less up-and down hiking and gave us more time to think about images. I made an early image, stopping as the others tromped on. Perhaps they’re so used to fall English grasses, bracken fern, and bare trees to pay much attention to landscapes and hills that are foreign to flatlanders used to the Dutch landscape.
It was a good location, offering a range of photographic opportunities.
And the still water provided plenty of reflection images.
I have to admit, I really appreciated the stops where Ann and I had the opportunity to take the time we usually do at a location to find and make images.
he next day was much like the first. Skip the morning shoot due to rain from the night before and the heavy overcast, then head off to several known locations. I do like the fact that I wasn’t having to find these nice spots on my own!
Again, perhaps it’s because it’s one in a million in the UK, but I couldn’t believe that everyone was quickly walking past this lovely creek to get to the lake below and, in particular, to photograph the mountain, shrouded by clouds in the background in this image.
It was at this location where I spent quite a bit of time creating the image that I felt was one of the strongest images I made during the workshop. As usual, after making something I think is successful, I’ll try variations (just in case I was not as good in my original interpretation as I thought), and in this case, that partially meant trying a square format. I think the rectangular image is the stronger landscape photograph, but this one also conveys the intense emotions of what I was seeing and trying to instill in the photograph.
I also switched to a long telephoto, which totally eliminated the mood of the above image, but gave a very different feel for what that landscape is like. I wonder what it would be like to hike around that hillside and to see if you can make an image of that stream without rolling down the hill
And it should come as no surprise that there were images to be had directly behind me. I had to rush my last set of images (having spent so much time working on the moody image above to get it just right), but they were worth it . . . for the few moments that the sun broke out to light up that landscape. If you look very carefully on the right hand side, at the base of the big rock with trees on it, you can see Ann. I thought she is just a bit too small in this image to include it in the Shooting the Shooter blog post.
After the clouds closed up again, we hiked back to the cars and headed to another part of the lake for the next shooting session. I felt my first few images at that location didn’t quite work out. But I finally found a composition of barren tree branches and dry grasses that satisfied me. I wonder if I would have made this image if I hadn’t tried working with this type of image that first morning at the Borrowdale.
On the way back to the car, I stopped to make an image that I had to pass up earlier, due to other photographers using the grasses off to the left as foregrounds in their images of the mountains. This was another one of those “conveying the oppressive nature of the overcast” images I made during the workshop.
From there we made a short stop to a higher mountain lake. You’ve seen another image from this location in the Photographs post, but from the one below, you can see why I so enjoyed the short time we were there. It was such a simple image, but the changing cloud and wind conditions afforded a variety of photographic opportunities.
To give you an idea of the hillside I was photographing from, take a look at the image below:
That’s Ann and Phil having a chat by the side of the road and a few colleagues down by the shore (with others off to the left and right that you can’t see). And no, that Range Rover is not the vehicle we drove around in. As I mentioned in the Photographs post, Alister was the only one who, like me, went up the hill instead of down it.
Our final stop of the day was at Derwentwater lake, the one near the Borrowdale Hotel, at a location a bit south of Keswick (the Borrowdale is even further south). Again, another effort at attempting to photograph the gloom that heavy overcast skies can cast on a location - in this case, as the sun tries its best to break through the clouds before it sets (adding a strange colored glow to the thinner spots of clouds, and reflected in the water). Working this image to get this effect helped prepare me for one of the images I included in the Photograph post with the rocks in the foreground and the cloud covered mountains in the distance.
And with that, two intensive days of photography were over with nothing left but to have a beer, dinner and rest up to be on the move again the next morning.