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Newsletter
The newsletter of Dave Butcher keeps you up-to-date on where he is and what he is doing. This includes events, art fairs, lectures, workshops and courses. It also has latest trip information and black and white photography hints and tips appropriate for the time of year. When you subscribe you will receive 1 email every 1 to 3 months.
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The latest newsletter is below and to see previous ones follow this link to the iContact archive web site (click 'next' and 'previous' at the top of the page to navigate through them):
July 2010
Lake District and Peak District locations
Lake District course
Lake District course
There are still some places available on the Lake District 3 day course, meeting Thursday 30th September then 3 days of photography 1st to 3rd October. We will be based in the village of Boot in Eskdale. The cost is £550 for 3 days of photography and includes bed & breakfast in Stanley House with en-suite rooms to the equivalent of 4 star hotel quality. Locations include Eskdale, Wasdale and the coast between Ravenglass and St Bees Head. Subjects will include big views of the highest mountains in England (Scafell Pike, etc), Wast Water (deepest lake in England), a ruined Roman fort, lots of waterfalls including one 60 feet high, trees, rocks, beach and estuary views and lots more. On one day we will spend some time using Photoshop for simple editing of the images taken on the first 2 days and going over image evaluation - what makes a good print, etc.?
Scafell Pike and wast Water
Scafell from Hardknott Roman Fort
Peak District course
There are also places available on the Peak District 1 day course on Saturday 11th September, meeting in Tunstead Milton, just north of Buxton. In a day we visit 3 or 4 locations for big views, waterfalls, trees, rocks, etc, so lots of variety. The cost is £150 per person per day. There are also courses on the 8th and 9th of October.
3 Shire Heads Main Fall
All photo courses are suitable for both digital and film camera users of any ability, and will help you capture pictures that work well in black and white. Pretty much any camera is suitable from pocket-sized compacts to digital slr's and medium format film. The group size is small, just 5 people, with my wife Jan and I as tutors so that you receive lots of attention, especially with the more artistic side of photography, as well as whatever help you need in getting to grips with the settings to use on your camera. Learning to take good black and white images will improve any colour work that you do; there will be more structure and you will have patterns, shapes, textures and tones within your images to add to what you would otherwise have taken.
One-to-one courses are always available if you or a group of friends want a more personal course. Call me for a chat. It's a good way of making rapid progress.
Ilford support me and my courses and provide 3 rolls of film to each person on a course with a film camera and they supply sample packs of Harman Photo inkjet paper to all digital camera users on my courses.
Darkroom Printing Courses
I run darkroom printing courses throughout the year. The group size is no more than 2 people so you receive lots of attention. They are £150 for a place on a group course and £300 for a 1-to-1 course. The next ones are on Sunday 12th September and Sunday 10th October. Ilford Photo provide all paper and chemicals free of charge for use on my darkroom courses.
I run darkroom printing courses throughout the year. The group size is no more than 2 people so you receive lots of attention. They are £150 for a place on a group course and £300 for a 1-to-1 course. The next ones are on Sunday 12th September and Sunday 10th October. Ilford Photo provide all paper and chemicals free of charge for use on my darkroom courses.
If you want to learn the easy way to make black and white prints, using split grade printing, then 1 day with me should be all that you need! You can expect to make up to 6 or 7 good quality prints in 1 day, depending on the quality of your negatives.
Photoshop Image Editing Courses
If you would like a course on Photoshop image editing I can run these as private courses for 1 or more days. Mostly I edit images to look and print similar to the prints that I make in the darkroom. If learning these sort of skills is of interest please contact me to talk through the options.
Events
Art Fairs and other events
Our next event is the Great Dome Art Fair in Buxton Dome. The preview evening is on Friday 23rd with the main show open on Saturday 24th to Sunday 25th July, 10 am to 4.30 pm Free parking and free admission. Jan and I will be there for the duration. This is the main showpiece event for members of Peak District Products, a group of around 70 professional artists, designers, crafts-people, furniture makers and a chocolatier.
New images on the main web site have slowed down a bit. I have been a bit busy. Quite a few new New York images, including the Statue of Liberty and Central Park.
Statue of Liberty and Bird
Central Park from Bow Bridge
A frequently asked questions page has been added to the Technical Notes page.
We are trying to add lots more images taken on courses onto the main web site with a link to a new area on Flickr for considerably more. This is live now, accessed from the Courses page, but does not have many images on it so far. Have a look in a week or two.
I now have separate web sites for each of my 3 books:
These give a better idea of the content in each book, including some text and several pictures as well as maps, if included.
In addition, I now have a summary web site for photography courses:
and a similar overview site for the business:
These all link to the www.davebutcher.co.uk web site, which remains the main site with all images and full secure shopping cart. That makes a total of 6 web sites now, plus my Google blog.
Andy Oakey, my web man, thought I should have a Wikipedia page. He pulled it all together and this is now live. When he told me what he was having to do I was pleased I wasn't doing it, far too complicated for me to take on!
Lake Light
New book on the Lake District
Lake Light is selling well. It is available through my web site for £15 (free p&p) and from good booksellers. There are 80 pages with 89 images, a map of each location, detailed captions to aid finding the location of each photograph, and a table of data showing details for each image. Joe Cornish, UK landscape photographer, has written the foreword. There is a 5 page article on the use of digital cameras for black and white landscape photography, covering the tools and techniques that are of greatest use.
New book on the Lake District
Lake Light is selling well. It is available through my web site for £15 (free p&p) and from good booksellers. There are 80 pages with 89 images, a map of each location, detailed captions to aid finding the location of each photograph, and a table of data showing details for each image. Joe Cornish, UK landscape photographer, has written the foreword. There is a 5 page article on the use of digital cameras for black and white landscape photography, covering the tools and techniques that are of greatest use.
Planned Photo Trips
Our next photo trips are to Grassington in the Yorkshire Dales in August followed by Hong Kong, Sydney and New Zealand in October/November. We have never been to the Far East before so I'm expecting lots of new pictures with a different feel to them.
I'm still walking the hills regularly, taking the odd roll of film as I go. So far I have walked a bit over 450 miles this year. I replace my boots every year or so and have just bought some new ones - Scarpa Ranger GTX. They are very comfy right out of the box; just what I needed.
Seasonal Notes from Derbyshire
We had good summer weather during most of June. Long dry, warm spells. Then a hose pipe ban was introduced here as water levels in local reservoirs dropped considerably. This of course signalled the start of torrential rain storms! Everything is very green and reservoirs are fast filling up! We also had an electrical storm last night, not that common in the Peak District.
During the dry spell there was lots of time to take photographs but the sun was needed for big views so that shadows and silhouettes could add to the pictures. There wasn't much in the rivrs. Now that has changed and waterfalls and rivers are giving good shots again. Try a range of shutter speeds from 1/2 second to 1/250th second.
On sunny days also consider infra-red images. With digital cameras you either need to convert a camera body specially for it or use Photoshop to give an approximation of the effect. Film users should use something like Ilford SFX, a Heliopan 715 or Hoya 72 filter and ISO 5 or so; prints need high contrast to show the full effect. Look for sunlit foliage with bold shapes in the image for best effect. Avoid conifers, they give off very little infra-red.
Photo Lectures
Lecture bookings
My next lecture is in Buxton at the Great Dome Art Fair; Saturday 24th July, 2pm for 45 minutes. This will be on the images in Lake Light, my new book.
I have lots of bookings for lectures in the rest of 2010 and 2011 from Richmond on Thames to Norwich to Bradford. The new lecture Lake Light will be ready for early September.
If you want to book me check my web diary first to see dates that are already taken, for whatever reason.
Blog, Facebook and Linkedin
Dave Butcher News Blog
The plan is for me to add my latest news to my blog every few days but problems with my Blackberry and Palm have extended this somewhat at times (I use these when away from my desktop pc).
Dave Butcher News Blog
The plan is for me to add my latest news to my blog every few days but problems with my Blackberry and Palm have extended this somewhat at times (I use these when away from my desktop pc).
I am on Facebook as monodave using mono@davebutcher.net. There is a link from my web site Links page as well as the one here.
My newsletters appear every month or two.
If you know someone who would like to receive this newsletter then please pass it on and they can subscribe by signing up through my web site.
Dave Butcher 15-July-2010
