Newsletter

My newsletter keeps you up-to-date on where I am and what I am doing. This includes events, art fairs, lectures, workshops and courses. It also has latest trip information and photography hints and tips appropriate for the time of year. When you subscribe you will receive 1 email from me every 1 to 3 months.

You can sign up to receive my email newsletter and also read past newsletters from the archive. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Your privacy is important to me and to respect it I promise never to sell, trade or rent your name and email address.

Just fill in your name and email address below and I will do the rest.

The latest newsletter is below and to see previous ones follow this link to the iContact archive web site:

Newsletter January 2010

Events

Art Fairs and other events

This is the quiet time of year for shows. Our next event is Focus on Imaging at the NEC Birmingham, Sunday 7th to Wednesday 10th March. I will be on the Harman Technology stand, near the entrance to Hall 9. They have been very generous and given us a large part of the Ilford Photo side of the stand. Jan and I will be there for the full 4 days (and set-up day). My 3rd book Lake Light will be launched at the show and I will be signing books as they are bought. We will be doing shows in Buxton and possibly in Wisley, Henley, Stonor Park, Chatsworth House and maybe some other placestoo.

Web Site

New Images

There are lots of new images on the web site, mostly of the Lake District and a few of Lech in Austria. All of the images in the new Lake Light book and quite a few that we couldn't fit in. Lots of catching up to do adding new images from lots of other places. Will try and do a few at a time on a regular basis to start clearing the backlog.

Lake Light

New book on the Lake District

Lake Light is starting to look like a book now. The first proof has been edited and I should receive the second proof from the designer soon. It is 80 pages with a map of each location, 85 images in 3 sections, detailed captions to aid finding the location of each photograph, a table of data showing details for each image. There is also an article on the use of digital cameras for black and white landscape photography. Most of the people who come on my courses have digital cameras so this sort of information should help them and anyone else wishing to do this. Harman Technology are busy planning the stand for Focus on Imaging and the large area that they are giving us for the book launch and an exhibition from the book. The price has increased, despite what I said in my last newsletter. Lake Light will be £15 instead of £14.99. Hope everyone who wants a copy can afford the extra penny! It will simplify me working out discounts to bookshops and distributors.

Scales Force, Buttermere

Landscape Photography Courses

Lake District and Peak District locations

Places are available on all courses in 2010 but I have a marketing campaign about to start in a few magazines so book early to avoid disappointment. Lake District 3 day landscape photography courses, based in Eskdale, start on the evening of March 14th, then 3 days of photography15th to 17th March.The cost is £550 for 3 days of photography and includes bed & breakfast. Hopefully we will be taking snow-topped peaks and waterfalls in full flow. There are also courses in May and September giving a chance for different conditions. Our 1 day courses in the Peak District resume on 9th April and run monthly through the year until October (excepting August). The cost remains £150 per person per day. All photo courses are suitable for both digital and film camera users of any ability,and willhelp you capture pictures that work well in black and white. My wife Jan and I will provide a lot of help with the more artistic side of photography, as well as whatever help you need in getting to grips with your camera. I have been doing quite a few one-to-one courses recently, if this appeals to you, or for agroup of friends then do please 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 have just agreed to supply sample packs of Harman Photo inkjet paper to all digital camera users on my courses.

Darkroom Printing Courses

Dates for 2010

I am running darkroom printing courses in 10 of the 12 months in 2010. There is the slim chance that it will be too hot inmy Derbyshiredarkroom in July and August so these are the months excluded! They are£150 for a place on a group course and £300 for a 1-to-1 course. There are places available on all 2010 courses. The next ones are 6th January and 12th February. 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!

Black and White Photography magazine

Competition

Black and White Photography magazine have once again agreed to support a competition run by me in associationwith Harman Technology. The competition will be launched in the March issue with a prize for 3 lucky readers of a day out with mein the Lake District as well as £500 of Ilford / Harman products. The entry requirements are not that onerous. You just need to send your name, address, email and telephone number to Black and White Photography magazine. They choose the winners at random. The date of the course for the winners will be in July. The locations will be taken from my Lake Light book. The March issue will also have some images, taken on the 2009 competition coursethat I ran in the Peak District, by the winners Rob White, Jayne Swinhoe and Stephen Hill.

Derwent Water, Keswick

Photo Trips

Planned Photo Trips

In just a couple of weeks time we go to Colorado for skiing and snowshoeing. We are going via New York for some more winter shots, hopefully with snow.

The planning was going fine until the terror attack in the USA over Christmas. I now can't get any definitive response about taking film onto the plane as hand luggage. Film cannot go in the hold as the more powerful x-ray machines used for hold luggage will ruin film making it unusable (the x-rays expose the film as if you had just unwound it in white light). I have had x-ray fogging with film going through hand luggage machines. With roll film this is seen as writing on the roll film wrapper or adjacent zips on luggage being exposed onto the negatives leading to numbers, arrows and zip patterns being superimposed onto my negatives. Looks like hand luggage is much reduced so I have bought a rigid Peli case for my cameras so that they can go in the hold.

I am looking into buying film in the USA and having as much as possible processed over there. This is a little expensive as I have already bought 200 rolls of 120 Ilford FP4 especially for the trip. There is a great processing lab in New York called Chelsea Photo that I have used before but Boulder is not that straightforward, so far, andno matter what I decide to do there will always be a few rolls of unused film and exposed but unprocessed film. The New York lab usually turns things around in 1 day but Boulder want 5 days. Looks like the postal services will have to be used at some point to get around this dilemma! Stop Press; Just received a reply from the US TSA and it looks like hand searches are still available and film can be taken on the plane as hand luggage. My blog has the full text of their reply and my original email.

Photo Tips

Seasonal Notes from Derbyshire

We are in the grip of winter here in the Derbyshire Peak District as I write this. The snow has been on the ground since 18th December, I remember the date because it was the first of a 3 day private photography course. It has been topped up several times since and the temperature has hardly risen tofreezing point in all this time. The good thing is that we have had a few days with blue skies and sunshine which has given excellent conditions for winter photography. I know people find it difficult to take good snow shots so here are a few tips. It should be reasonably simple, with film cameras just add 2 stops of exposure to what you would use normally. Make sure the camera meter isn't pointing at the sun though when you do this or it will be completely fooled. With digital it will also need more exposure but use the histogram function and the display screen to check that you haven't burnt out all detail from the white and lighter parts of your image. If you have then reduce your exposure until the histogram shows a small gap between spikes and the axis at the right hand side of the graph. If the sun is not out thenit is a lot easier, you will still need a little bit more exposure but not 2 stops. In either case, with film cameras meter off a light shadow area where you want to hold detail, such asrocks, trees, building brickwork or, the ideal, Peak District dry stone walls. These are often a good approximation to the 18% grey that light meters are calibrated to. Not a lot of people know that! With digital cameras meter off something a bit brighter to make sure your lighter image areas hold detail. Don't just take the big views, impressive though they may be, but look for shapes and patternsin the snow, tree trunks plastered with snow, icicles hanging from rooftops or better still frozen waterfalls, subtle leading lines for your views like snow covered roads, and so on. Everything is simplified when covered by snow. Things that look obtrusive or downght ugly no longer show up in your pictures. It's a great time for black and white photography and my favourite time of year. Have fun and good luck!

Photo Lectures

Lecture bookings

I have taken lots of bookings for lectures in 2010 and even well into 2011. I also have the first bookings for Lake Light so I had better hurry up and make the prints! Clubs new to me include Stourbridge, Cleethorpes, St Neots, Prestwich, Richmond and East Midlands Monochrome in Earls Barton. Brighton and Hove PS still hold the distance record for me though! The new Lake Light lecture will have a large section basaed on the new book of the same name. There will also be landscape photographs from other areas, like Scandinavia and Utah,and some cities for a bit of variety. I am taking bookings from September 2010.

Blog and Facebook

Dave Butcher News Blog

I add my latest news to my blog roughly every other day. Recentposts displayed several of the new Lake Light book images as well as images taken on courses at the end of 2009. In the run up to Christmas it also had the latest printing and shipping information as well as dates for last orders to arrive for Christmas. I am also on Facebook but I'm not as good at keeping this up to date; every now and then I get carried away and write something though.

Next Newsletter

My newsletters generally appear somewhat infrequently. However, now I have a system for maintaining the distribution list and sending out to a large group without being blacklisted for sending spam this should change but will keep fingers crossed just in case for the timebeing. I expect the next newlsetter will be out in early March, depending on what I have to say. If you know someone who would like to receive this newsletter then please pass it on and they can subscribe directly here (there should be a signup link below)or by signing up through my web site.

Dave Butcher 4-January-2010