Lightchasers photography workshops are designed to educate and inspire. You may be just starting out in photography and want to learn about exposure, ISO and aperture settings, or the many creative combinations. How they relate to each other and the various ways you can use them. Maybe you’ve been at the shutter end of a camera for a lot longer and find there is so much more you would like to learn.
A lot of people don’t realize there is a big difference between a workshop and a tour. Darwin Wigget has done a beautiful job of explaining just what those differences are. I’d like to thank Darwin for allowing us to link to his article, he’s done a wonder job.
Our south island based workshops are in Twizel, landscape photography in all directions. From the big MacKenzie country landscapes through to tiny macros of the delicate frost formed on the tussock grasses, iced over ponds and even small lakes. The scenery around Twizel and the Mackenzie Basin is stunning, especially in winter. With challenging and changing, light this place keeps you on your toes. It makes for very interesting discussions in the evening about the best ways to process the photographs from the days efforts, and whether there was a better way to shoot them.
The north island based workshops are held at Waikanae which has it own diverse scenery. More information on these can be found here at Tony’s site.
Learn more about your camera and how to use it. We will also teach you some different techniques for post processing in Lightroom and Photoshop, the different work flows and how these useful programmes can improve your creativity and output. Maybe you would like to develop a new way of doing things, a new style of your own with both camera and computer. Whether you are a beginner or a more experienced photographer we can cater to your needs and have some fun along the way.
See here for Tony’s bio and his photo’s are here. I’m on Google profiles for both.
These workshops are full on, with VERY early rises, and VERY late to bed. So get yourself well rested up before hand and be prepared for a very intense journey, whether you are doing a two day or a five day workshop. We both hope you take a lot away with you from our workshops and see a leap in both your photography, further processing skills and enjoyment.
***We are still in the process of working out a schedule for the next 12 month period. We hope to have some final details by the end of August and at this stage intend on running our next scheduled workshop early September.
The cost and what you get.
- Each photographic workshop will have a maximum of six participants.
- The cost of our workshops is $200 per person per day for tuition, plus accommodation and meals which we can supply at an additional price.
- Non photographic partners/parents are welcome but they will have to entertain themselves through the day, there is plenty for them to do in and around Twizel, or just chill out and relax while we are away on our days events.
- You are more than welcome to bring something along for a couple of quiet drinks at the end of the day. Lunch is often on the run and is up to each person to sort themselves.
- On site transportation is supplied however you need to get yourself to Twizel.
- We will open a private page on the blog for participants of each workshop, there you can confer with each other about car pooling, gear pooling and anything else you can think of (including questions for us).
- The minimum required is three participants. If we don’t reach this target within two weeks of the scheduled date your deposit will be refunded in full, or if you would prefer, you can re-schedule to another workshop.
- Within 30 days of your workshop the deposit (50%) is non-refundable (unless you or we come up with a replacement).
Itinerary:
Night one: Hopefully every one can arrive by 1900hrs (7pm) for the meet and greet, get settled/set up and a quick look at everyone’s sample images. We would like each person to bring 5-10 images. Either on a memory stick, cd or dvd if you don’t have a laptop or external hard drive, we can have a look at where you are at, and hear what you would like to do differently both with your photography and post processing. A brief on what we will be doing over the weekend, the weather doesn’t effect us to much as there are plenty of options for inside work or other locations if it gets that bad.
There is an optional extra of going to the Mt John Observatory. The cost of this is around $85 per person and is highly recommended if we have that option, in other words, if the weather is good. We’ll also be shooting around Tekapo and the Church of the Good Shepherd at sunset as there is some good educational aspects to be shown here on what you can do to get something a bit different.
Day one
- Up an hour before sunrise with a quick bushman’s breakfast and out the door.
- Back around two to three hours later and download the morning’s effort while we have breakfast proper, then a review and talk about what you shot and how you could have shot differently and other way’s to approach the subject also touching on way’s to import and backing up your images. At this time we also delve into location scouting.
- A light lunch and break till 1330-1400 (1.30-2PM) then away to have a look around and try some different thing’s out. Then onto a sunset shoot.
- Home and download again, away for a meal then back to go over the afternoon’s photo’s.
Next day
- And repeat with various changes to get you up a level. The reason for not putting a lot more detail here is we’d like to see where your at and adjust our program to suit. ;) This does however give you some kind of idea on how your time with us will be spent (on the go and learning!!)
- As you can see the above list is targeting the more beginner type photographers. If you are past this great! The format will stay about the same for everyone but the material changes to adjust for your skill level.
Important Gear:
- A camera is very useful, along with some knowledge on how to adjust the aperture, ISO, shutter speed and how to put it onto bracket mode if it has one.
- A small torch (important this one).
- Clothes fit for the season plus something warm and windproof no matter what the season.
Useful gear:
- Cable release if you’ve got it.
- CPL = circular polarising filter.
- Also any neutral density or graduated neutral density filters but only if you already own them.
- Laptop and a memory stick of at least 4 gig and a portable backup drive, again only if you have one.
- We have several tripods, however if you prefer then bring your own.
Please use the contact form below to get in touch or our email and phone numbers are in the ‘About/contact’ page. Cheers Stephen
