Free studio based, portrait & studio lighting course every quarter of 2009 and our Christmas present to 5 individuals on the 20th December 2008...

On 20 December 2008, and then each quarter in 2009, we will be offering a free one day studio based, portrait photography course. With a focus on the use of light, both natural & artificial with a guest subject / model.

  

  

Each of these one-day sessions will have spaces for five individuals to join us at our Hampshire-based studios, where you will have available to you, between two and three professional photographers, with specialist knowledge in studio and location-based portrait lighting. And, we will even have a guest model attend. There is even an outside chance we may even provide coffee too.

There will be no pre-requisites with regards to skill level. But it will also not be on a first come first served basis.

Interested - Of course you are - click to read on and get involved...

In life, there is no such thing as free. Now normally, I refuse to use the word free. However, in this case, as far as financial matters are concerned, we will not charge you a penny to attend. It will probably cost you something to get here - you may even buy a few bits prior to attending. So it won’t be free in the true sense of the word. But you won’t be paying the usual £250 - £300 that we charge for our scheduled courses.

What we will ask from you, are the following things...

First, we want you to join our brand new Flickr-based community: the ‘Ginkgo Community on Flickr’ - Innovative name for it isn’t it? ;-).

Then we want you to submit three images, and only three, that you have taken since reading this post. In other words, we want to see what you can do when asked - now, rather than what you can show us you have done from some point in the past. Each of the images must involve a creative use of light. This can be natural or synthetic.

   

   

In addition to these three images, we want you, in no more than 250 words, to let us and others know why you think you should be one of the attendees on the free course, rather than paying to attend the courses that we will be running in 2009.  This is in no way a trick question and we are certainly not looking to embarrass people. We would just really like to know why you want to come along... Plus a very quick summary of your experience and self perceived skill level etc. 

We also want you to give a commitment to remain involved within the the ginkgo community, to help others from the knowledge and experience that you get from the free one-day session with us and from how you subsequently use it, adapt it and build on it.

What are looking for is a mix of individuals, experience and skill level for each of the sessions so that each will get the absolute most out of the day, not only from us, but also from each other.

As well as these free one-day studio sessions, we will also be hosting a series of open sessions at various locations in Hampshire. Where attendees of our courses and their guests, free or paid for, can come along for additional tips and tricks, not just from us, but from everyone else involved in the community and of course, to just get together and talk photography. Each of the sessions will have a key focus and plenty of notice will given so that we can all prepare and discuss how we can get the most out of them as a group.

The key driver behind doing this, is not only that we have an ethic whereby we feel a very real need to give a little back. But we would like to encourage this ethic amongst others that have a passion for photography, be they and amateur or professional, experienced or novice.

There is always something to learn and always someone to learn from. When you feel there isn’t anything else to learn or anyone else to learn from, it’s probably time to do something else.

Professional photographers are generally quite closeted when it comes to their techniques and the sharing of their knowledge & experience, with the exception of when there is something in it to them. This has traditionally been driven by the fear of competition. I appreciate this is a bit of a generalisation. particularly as there is now quite a sea-change, thanks to the power of the web and the virtual communities you can find on there. 

What we would really love to be able to do, is in some small way help to encourage more of a transition from the virtual community to the real community. Reading and watching is good. Collaborating and doing is a hell of a lot better and seriously more fun.

So if you are interested in getting involved and getting access to some free, sorry, extremely excellent value and high quality tuition. What are you waiting for?

Whilst we have a series of syllabuses that we use for our scheduled courses, we also want to tailor them to your needs and wants as much as possible - just as with our standard courses.

If you’re in the Hampshire area, or are prepared to travel from wherever you are, get posting. And you never know, you may well get a slot. And even if you don’t, you could become part of a new community solely aimed at the sharing of knowledge, experience, techniques and collaboration in the virtual world, but far more importantly, in the real world too, with fellow enthusiasts.

Look forward to hearing from you!

Any questions, please feel free to drop me an email.

PS - If you'd like to see a little of our work - which is a little out of date I am afraid due to time constraints - why not have a look here for our photography and here for our art-working.

Footnote...

If you want to create one of the diagrams like the one at the top of the post. Follow this link Kevin Kertz and then click the ‘Download Lighting Setup File’. It’s a PSD file and each object is supplied on a labeled individual layer. To rotate and adjust, I just use the ‘Free Transform’ function in photoshop.

Comments

[Neil Francombe]

Sir?madam do you have a contact tel number? I reasonably new to studio lighting and very interested in your days input.

Many thanks

Neil