Sunday 21st February we ran our 'Shooting for Composites Workshop' in Chester. We had a brilliant group of people attend, with a mix of some full time professional photographers, and some keen amateur photographers. I really cannot wait to see what the group starts to produce with the addition of some new tools and concepts being added to their 'Photographic Toolkit'.
As usual we started with a coffee and a chat, which included introductions and aims of the workshop. We then moved onto an overview of everything we would do during the day. Following a coffee break we got hands on and shot 2 sets, with my amazing models for the day Michela and Gary. MUA work was done by Becky and was simply outstanding.
After a late lunch we proceeded to put an image together and apply the techniques we had learnt in the morning.
I'm a great advocate of photography first and foremost, and then using composite techniques on top of the photography, not in place of to create the image. The whole group saw that that was the only way to go when I showed different examples of photography that just didn't work, basically because the photography was not correct at the start of the process.
I made a choice early on when I began to run workshops some years ago, that I wanted to give people attending the tools and concepts to be able to create their own work, rather than to purely run them to be portfolio building exercises. While portfolio building days are great, and have their place, the 'Shooting for Composites Workshop' is about learning first, portfolio pictures second.
I really cannot wait to do this all over again at the next workshop.