And she’s looking good

As I mentioned a few posts back, I decided to sign up to an Olympus sponsored workshop in Venice led by landscape photographer Steve Gosling and Travel and Portrait photographer Neil Buchan-Grant.

Well, that’s now in the past, and it was a great experience. Neil and Steve are great photographers, excellent and attentive teachers, and wonderful people. They worked extremely hard to make sure all participants got plenty out of it. From my point of view I found being forced strongly encouraged to photograph the standard scenes of San Marco and Rialto thronged by tourists and in very harsh light, rather than skulk way off the beaten track to my usual dingy haunts frustrating at first but very rewarding at the end. I also found the very new experience of photographing models quite captivating.  Again, being encouraged to do this in the mid-day hothouse of Piazza San Marco, literally engulfed by excited tourists, really pushed the envelope. Neil set up the lighting, directed the models, leaving us to just grab the opportunities. I don’t think I’m going to branch out into yet another direction photographically, but it was a far more engaging and enjoyably creative experience than I expected.

From the cityscape / landscape side, Steve helped me a lot to put some order into my jumbled approach, and to point me in the direction of themes I had started on but not really recognised. I have to admit that at one low point, between being kept awake, dead tired, at 1am, with an alarm call pending at 4am, I'd decided to hit the pause button on photography after the workshop, but the next day completely revived me, even if some of my co-participants made a lot more of the 5am session at Rialto than I did.

Just for fun, here is a small selection of model portraits I shot. In at least two of these cases I was wilfully ignoring the directions / advice Neil was giving. I hope he’ll forgive me!

Olympus Pen E-P3, Panasonic Leica 25mm f1.4

Olympus Pen E-P3, m.Zuiko 45mm f1.8

Olympus Pen E-P3, m.Zuiko 25mm f1.8

Olympus Pen E-P3, Sigma DN 60mm f2.8

Olympus Pen E-P3, Sigma DN 60mm f2.8

Olympus Pen E-P3, Sigma DN 60mm f2.8

Thanks as well to our two very patient and professional models, Ira (first three) and Chiara.

The Olympus E-P5 was kindly leant to me by Neil Buchan-Grant. It’s a very nice camera, and the output is distinctly better than my E-P3. Quite shockingly so, in fact. There is far more dynamic range and the highlight rolloff is much smoother. However, it probably wasn’t such a good idea to use an unfamiliar camera in such an unfamiliar context.