Wildlife Photography
Foundation Workshop

An Introduction to

'Better Creative Wildlife Photography'
with
Wildlife in Pixels &
Bob Rigby Photographic Ltd

The aim of this course is to introduce you to the ART of creative wildlife photography by helping you decipher the SCIENCE behind the tools you have at your disposal.

Now I know that might sound either boring or scary to you, but believe me, the fundamentals are very easy to grasp and the rewards you will reap in your future photography will make a small amount of effort now pay dividends from the very next time you pick up your camera.

There has always been a debate as to whether photography was ART or SCIENCE – well, it’s both to be honest; but with the advent of the digital age and that big letter ‘A’ on most DSLRs a lot of the theory seems to have been dispensed with.

Back in the days of ‘wet’ photography the theory was a pretty vital facet of the trade to learn – film was slow, cameras were slow, and you could not afford to spend time doing anything but getting everything right BEFORE you pressed the shutter release.

But nowadays we can ‘rattle off’ a 16Gb card at 11 frames per second with the camera thinking for us, and we lose the ability to judge things and get it right ourselves – no camera, no matter how expensive and complex can work out the correct exposure for a particular detail within the frame; and no camera can auto focus to maximise your available depth of field.

Sweeping statements I know, but ultimately justifiable!

However, as you will see on this course, there are ways to help your camera get these and many other things right with just a little thought and input from you, and your images will start to turn out just as you imagined or wished they would before you pressed that button!

The course itself is structured in a simple and easy-going way, and is loosely based around three ‘lumps of glass’ – long telephoto 500mm+, medium telephoto 300mm and 150mm to 180mm macro.

These three classes of lens are all that I ever use (other than wide angle and ‘standard’) to take all my images; there is absolutely no need to have a range of lenses that cover the entire focal length range from 24mm to 500mm+, 3 or 4 lenses are all you’ll ever NEED to cover everything – WANTS come under a separate listing!

Each lens class will be introduced and discussed at length in terms of usage and suitability to a subject, paying particular attention to all the negative points of each lens – as it is these negatives that, together with the shortcomings of your camera body, lead to the disappointments you sometimes get when viewing your images.

If you wish to bring along a disc with some of your images on it, images you are proud of or images you are having problems with, then please do so and they can be discussed either “in workshop” or privately ‘critiqued’ as you wish.

There will be plenty of time throughout the day for any questions you have, in fact your questions are an integral part of the workshop so please feel free to “ask away”, and if you have questions that are not covered during the workshop PLEASE feel free to ask during the coffee and lunch breaks, or after the course has concluded for the day.

It is our sole endeavour to deliver to you the best and most concise information we can to enable you to “get out there” and produce the images YOU WANT.

Looking forward to seeing you on the course!

Andy