Workshops

“Your pictures are great. You must have a great camera”

Yes I do. I have an SLR (with a selection of lenses) a pocket sized point and shoot and a smartphone with a camera.

Petra, LesvosIn their own way they are all “great cameras”. Which of the three took the picture on the right? Click on the picture to see a bigger image. Yes, you guessed it it was taken with my Phone! Would a better camera have taken a better picture? Perhaps. But the important lesson here is “a cheap camera in your hand is a million times better than the worlds most expensive camera left at home.”

Start to look at your surroundings as if your eye were a camera. What do I mean by that? A camera only ever captures part of any scene. Use your hands (movie director style) to blank out the bits that the camera would not see. A great tip from a famous landscape photographer is to cut a rectangle into card with the aspect ratio of your camera (you might need to check in the manual). Take this out with you and look at the world through the card. In a very surreal way, the world changes. You can zoom in and out by moving the card further away from or closer to your eye. You might think this crazy. OK, humour me. Just remember that a famous photographer makes a very good living from taking pictures that are inspired by such a piece of card. Try white card. Try black card. The colour of the ‘photo mount’ can change the picture.

Before you spend a fortune on a new camera:

  • Learn to see the world as a camera does.
  • Learn how to use your current camera.
  • Read about photographic composition.
  • Try a photography workshop.

So now we get to the hard sales pitch. I run workshops here on Lesvos. Each is tailored to the needs of the individual (or group). What do your holiday photographs look like? Where do they live? What is that ‘perfect picture’ worth? You can see on this website what my pictures look like and they live on calendars and the walls of peoples homes. The ‘holiday snap’ of my son and grand-daughter [below] makes my heart sing every time I walk past the poster of it on my wall at home. Its worth is joy beyond money and riches.

gavin+felicity

Send me an email and lets see if I can help your heart sing too. robin@robin-sanders-photography.co.uk

Enjoy your holiday. Enjoy your photography.