Colours of Calderdale Landscape Photography Workshop

Calderdale, best known for its textile industrial heritage, is a Pennine valley in West Yorkshire. The river Calder rises on the Eastern slopes of the Pennines, with the lower reaches flowing through the major textile producing towns of the past; Dewsbury, Huddersfield and Brighouse. Although industrialisation on a large scale has taken over much of the landscape of West Yorkshire, there are still one or two locations where stunning scenery and the remnants of ancient industry blend together perfectly to provide some fantastic photographic opportunities.

It's likely we'll begin the day meeting at Hebden Bridge. At this time of year, the Calder Valley is highly prone to mist inversions (especially after a cool, clear and wind free night). If this is the case, we'll start the day at one of a number of elevated viewpoints that get us up above the mist, and allow us to photograph the views across the valley. The Calder Valley is home to some amazing woodland, and as this particular workshop is timed to coincide with the peak of autumn colour, we'll certainly be looking to venture into these areas to explore the majestic Beech and mature, gnarled Oak trees. There are also a number of valleys and gorges, with small tributary streams and rivers, which start high on the moors before cascading over small waterfalls, and through magnificent woodland before entering the Calder in the main valley below. We'll aim to capture images of the wider views to Stoodley Pike, but it's also important to spend time looking at the smaller details, such as the moss covered walls, rocks and ferns that line the sides of the valley.

We take a break around the midpoint of the day for food and refreshments, usually at one of the many cafes in Hebden Bridge. This also gives us a chance to review images from the first half of our day, and also look at a typical processing workflow using Adobe Lightroom/Photoshop.

After lunch we'll visit at least a couple more locations, all of which are chosen around the prevailing weather. If conditions look promising, then we may leave the woodland behind for a change of scenery, and head up on to the moors to photograph the sunset. The Colours Of Calderdale landscape Photography Workshop will conclude just after sunset and we'll head back to our meeting point. Walking on the workshop is mostly quite easy along reasonable paths. There are some small hills to walk up, though these are usually quite short distances and broken up by us taking images

This is a full day workshop, which means at least 8 hours of tuition. On booking you will receive a simple questionnaire to fill out which helps me to tailor the day exactly to your requirements. A basic day includes tuition on the following subjects; (dependent on your experience) Best practice camera set-up, shooting manual and Raw Format and the reasons why, creative uses of both shutter speed and apertures, explanations of exposure, metering, bracketing e.t.c, manual focusing for maximum depth of field (Also known as Hyperfocal focusing) The use of filters, both exposure balancing (Neutral Density Graduated) and creative effects (Polarisers, Straight Neutral Density) This leaves the best part of the day free to discuss the broader and much more subjective topic of composition. What makes a good image? Elements to look for when composing images, use of depth, scale, distance and perspective, shoot and location planning around seasonal and differing lighting conditions, so you can go away and successfully plan the best times of year to photograph your own set of locations.