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The changes to our training services

We have been saying for some time that a new website is on the way, well its now arrived, but as you will see its now far simpler dividing what we can offer into different groups. The pricing has also changed from a straight hour charge to a different rates for each group of courses to reflect what is involved, reducing greatly the cost of introductory courses, and the tailored 1 to 1 a little. We have removed the online calendar, so you will need to contact us about available training dates and there are now date restrictions on different groups so that have time in the calendar for multi day courses, its mainly the introductory courses that this relates to.

From a practical point putting on course, some take up a lot of our time, putting together the course to meet the individuals needs, in some case we spend twice as much time in preparations we do in teaching. While some other we have done so many times that it requires only the time to set up in the morning. Similarly some masterclasses require access to specialist equipment, models or more and this needs organising, and involves cost.  To reflect this better and allow those looking for the more simple basic training access to training at a more reasonable cost, we have now priced training by the type of course, so introductory courses, that require no preparation much and no hiring in of equipemnt are reduced, and at the other end the masterclasses are increased slightly.

What we are not doing any longer, is getting access early to all new Nikon cameras, with the depression and reduced training bookings, their is just not enough training revenue to cover the costs involved. Most courses don't require us to get into the nitty gritty of a model and most of the details are fundamentally the same, so if we have to struggle a bit, its going to be on some of the new, less used features. If we have to reach for an instruction book to work out something on very rare occasions with you, we will add the time taken on to the end of the course so that you achieve all that you expect to. Obviously one we have seen a few people with a camera that we don't have access to, we will have picked up these new features.

We have also dropped the option to have a second person in on a 1:1 course, this rarely works well, while in most cases a person will come with another who is to be the principle person getting training, but you still lose focus and don't achieve as mush as the second person still needs to follow, and often has other questions etc. With two beginners, one will pick up some items faster than another and the interests of one never lines up exactly with the others, so both get derogated training compared with 1:1.  You will recall we had small group course at an earlier point but dropped these as we felt they were very poor value for money, while the costs per person was lower they achieved far less and covered only a fraction of the area.

The other major change you will see is that we have switched a lot of our focus back to actually doing photography.  Food photography as you may be aware is one of the most technically challenging areas of photography, and something we have been teaching as a masterclass. Its an area we have become a specialist in and developed methods to achieve magical results.

Training choices for you

As you will know, we can put on just about any photography training you ask for, always on a 1 to 1 basis, and with the instructor you have become used to. In practice very few people who had been here for training bothered too much about the many course listed, preferring instead to tell us what they wanted to achieve or cover and we could then put the course together for them.  People making their first visits mostly choose one of the basic introductory courses  like the hands on a Nikon day or introduction to photography.

In many cases it makes far more sense from your viewpoint when coming again to work out what you want and tailor your training to meet this need, for example if you are doing a portrait day, we can use mains flash, Nikon creative lighting, tungsten or cool lights, and some of these together and in combination with reflectors, and many other accessories. added to this we can use Girlequins, (mannequins used for training) or live model or a mix of the two. In some cases people want training to enable them to get the most out of what they have, while others may like to see various methods in order to decide he way they wish to work.

We recognise out training is quite expensive however you will just about always improve your photography far more by spending a day with us than spending twice as much on a new lens, attachment or accessory, and without training you will have wasted the investment you have made in expensive equipment that you are not going to get the most from. Training of the type we do has to be quite costly, in most cases we spend as long preparing for your day with us as we spend on the course. The benefit is that you get exactly the training you want, achieving your objectives, making the most of your time and training investment.

From this you can see that the tailored 1:1 is the group heading for the courses that most of you will be using most of the time.   ..... > See tailored 1:1 courses page

If you already have quite high level of skill then a specialist masterclass could be a best choice, these differ in that they start at a far higher level, and by assuming you know all about the basics of photography, and have mastered depth of field, lens perspective, colour management and exposure. They are far more structured than the tailored 1:1 and often use specialist equipment, models, and require us to have more support to put them on, for example with the food photography masterclass we have to have someone helping looking after the food and the course and availability of food to photograph have to be well planned, so we cant go off at a tangent and sort out some other photography area people are having difficulty with as we can on a tailored 1:1. 

Generically you will find the introductory courses are very general, tailored 1:1. more focused but still covering quite an area, while masterclasses focus far tighter on a specific aspect of photography. Masterclasses  are not just for the training clients who are professional photographers, but suitable for all of you who want to get this more tightly focused training.   ....> see Masterclasses courses page

There is an overlap you can book a tailored 1:1 in the same subject as we offer masterclasses, and they will be different the  food photography masterclass  and food photography 1:1 is a good example. With the tailored 1:1 we cover all the basic ground work, we look at the aspects of food photography, the tricks of the trade, and more and do a small amount of photography using static items, bought in cakes, items out of packets etc. With the masterclass the groundwork is not covered, we go straight into photographic skills and techniques specific to food photography, and we do a lot of practical photography, including hot food that is prepared to be used on this course.

The other group of courses we offer are the VIP Plus ones, these are practical photographic expeditions with training and support. They can be in the UK, and where we make special arrangements to meet your requirements. Three are currently detailed two of which are very open to allow us to arrange just about anything for you and the third is a trip to Ghana in west Africa. any VIP plus can be of any length you choose and with the Ghana VIP plus we have a variety of lengths defined but it can be any other length you want.  ...: see page on VIP Plus.

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