web analytics

About Photographic Journeys

Why choose us ?
Divider
We’ve created ‘Photographic Journeys’ after years of combined professional photographic and photography travel experience.

Using our skill and passion for photography, travel and teaching, our aim was to build up a portfolio of photography-based workshops and photographic holidays to stunning destinations that will really give photographers hands on opportunities to develop their photographic skills.

What makes us unique is the fact that we have a range of workshops and tours that cater for all abilities, covering everything from basic camera skills to fine art printing and photo book design.

To ensure each customer gets plenty of valuable one on one tuition, we only operate small groups, allowing them to glean as much knowledge and advice from us as they can.

With all our workshops and photography-based tours, we encourage you to create and build something uniquely personal from your time and ‘Journey’ with us.

Partnering with LoxleyColour in Glasgow, we have designed a series of beautifully crafted and bespoke Fine-Art photographic storybooks.

These will allow you to ‘tell your story’ in a way that no other way can.

Selecting destinations and places, visiting them personally, working with our guides and overseas partners and facilitating your own development in the art of photography with the help of festivals, local events, and activities etc.

The picture tells it all. Nothing else is needed. Photography is an artistic language of non-verbal communication.

Like painting and music and sculpture it will convey thoughts, ideas, messages and meaning from person to person and viewer to viewer.

From landscapes to townscapes, markets to festivals, unique experiences to grand affairs and from decisive moments to candid street photography.

We are passionate about helping you develop your own skillsets, telling stories in the pictures you make while on our Journeys.

We’d like to take you on a journey


A ‘Learning’ Journey where you build confidence
A physical ‘Travelling Journey’ &
A creative ‘Making Journey’
Our destinations, photography workshops and holidays are uniquely planned.

We want to help you become a better technical photographer, a better thinking photographer and the designer & publisher of something that is truly original and exclusive. Something that will last beyond the current ‘century of forgotten images’. This is an old Chinese proverb I grew attached to when I was working in education.

It made so much sense and I believe is the key consideration when teaching others…

Tell me something – I’ll forget it !
Show me something – I’ll remember it !
Involve me in something – I’ll understand it !

Nomad child feeding goats in Ladakh © Hamish Scott-BrownOur ethos was to build in ‘real learning’ about photography for all levels, beginner to advanced and work with you in carefully chosen and selected locations that will inspire you to tell stories with your work.

Make you feel enthused to get up early and catch the dawn ‘Blue Hour’ and still feel driven to stay up to capture the ‘Golden hour’ at dusk and sundown.

We already know that today’s technology allows you to take photographs relatively easily with a Canon, Nikon, Leica or a Fuji to name but a few…

 

However, we want to stretch your creative abilities that bit further and assist you to reach the next level and on by showing what can be done when you move from simply being the camera operator and progress to become the ‘creative thinking photographer’, ceasing simply to take pictures *of things* but then to start taking photographs and telling visual stories *about things*.

Photography has evolved such a long way since it was a film only based media. Digital photography nowadays has changed the way we see the world hugely. It is no longer a craft reserved exclusively for the enthusiast and expert. Photographs and image making are more widespread, accepted and understood now than they have ever been since photography was conceived back in the early 1800s. The cameras in today’s world, whether it be a multi megapixel phone-cam, sophisticated pro-kit or off the shelf DSLR easily allow a child, a new user or photographer to take a well exposed colourful image.

Photography is so much more than just simply lifting a camera, releasing a shutter and making an image. It is a creative, non-verbal, artistic language capable of stirring emotions, telling stories, depicting a place and point in time or simply capturing a decisive moment that the photographer chooses.

 

When we began developing ‘Photographic Journeys’, we already knew that there were opportunities to take online courses, attend lectures, play with cameras, read some of the amazing books available (by distinguished photographers and authors) and even travel to locations and take pictures.

We are proud to say that our groups and overseas ‘Journeys’ are kept small. Groups are never larger than 10 and never smaller than 4. The reason for this is simple, it allows us to spend more time with you on a one-to-one basis, but you will still gain from the group dynamics. Small groups also mean that we are not transporting large numbers of people around and causing disturbance to the local villages, towns and carefully chosen locations that we will visit. We can go to places in vehicles that are discreet and, if required, we can easily split the group into two.

We know this works because we’ve both experienced first hand what it’s like when it’s not done that way !

Our photography workshops and tours are always focused on you and the locations and activities that will provide inspirational photographic opportunities. They are designed to improve and develop your understanding of good landscape and travel photography. Some locations and ‘Journeys’ may be aimed more at landscapes and some may be geared towards people and cultures. We are very keen to encourage some simple but very important practices of good travel photography.
Technical ability,
Artistic and creative ability,
Ethical consideration.

We’ll spend time with you and ensure that you have the right information to enable you to get the most from the ‘Journey’ and to return home with a great portfolio of photographs. This will mean spending time each day to review your work. This could be in the evening, or sometimes during the day, when the sun is too high for any worthwhile photography work. We will stop and find shade, maybe in a coffee shop or the hotel and critique your work and offer advice with image selection.

Managing your ‘workflow’ while you are away is very important. We will take time to show you post processing techniques in Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop CC and hopefully answer questions that you may have.

Finally, when the sun begins to drop, we will head out and seek the long shadows and the softer light of dusk and late afternoon. Returning with images that jump off the page will give you a ‘feel good’ factor that is crucial.

You may find that you are very tired at the end of the tour, but we know that you’ll be returning home with a great body of work, having learned new skills and seen things freshly. At home you will be able to curate your images at leisure, practice new post-processing techniques and finish your ‘Journey’ with a book containing your images.

A photograph has something to say – one person’s point of view interpreted through a lens. As photographers travel, their stories build into a library of memories that are as much about the photographer, as they are about the subjects they choose to photograph.

Whilst we appreciate that everyone enjoys taking certain types of photograph, or using their own approach to take those photographs, we want to encourage you to progress on your own personal photographic journey. We believe you learn more when you explore areas outside your comfort zone. With your help we will establish what your ‘comfort zone is’ and then challenge you to think and see the world differently. We will work closely with you to develop new photographic skills to help you realise this new vision. For some it will be a technical challenge, for others it may be a compositional challenge and then again for some, it could be gaining an insight and solution to a seemingly simpler yet more complex issue.

It sounds a little strange when you hear this; you can see – you’re a photographer, right? Yet how many times have you asked yourself why you weren’t able to take a particular shot, like the one in a book, or in a gallery, or in someone else’s portfolio! The answer could be that you need to begin training your eye to learn to see in a different way and that can really only be done by physically :
going somewhere new,
being inspired,
training your eye (and camera) with a new set of rules,
working with others in a small group (gleaning information),
and, of course, practicing.

The fact is, we never stop learning. Yet, working as photography tutors, tour guides and mentors, we have noticed that people often find it hard to admit that they often need to go ‘back to basics’ to move forward. You might find it difficult for a day or two, but we can assure you it will help you progress from where you currently are, to where you want to be in 6 months’ time, or even less if you are coming with us on a ‘Photographic Journey’

We believe that good photography comes from an awareness of your location and an ability to focus first on what you need to exclude, rather than what you want to include in the photograph. Once you know what to exclude and get ‘in the zone’, you will find it easier to see the things that need to be included and how they need to be composed in order to make a good image.

Rather than getting into the technical terminology on this page, we’ll leave that until we meet you on one of our ‘Journeys’. We can then sit down with you and establish how you want to improve, and discuss any aspects that confuse you. During our journey together, we can work alongside you to teach you the new skills you want to learn and to train your eye to see new things.

horses on the plain at yellowstone national park
Photographs, Books and Fine Art

Social Media and the ‘online world’ is amazing. You’re probably reading this on a phone, or a tablet or a laptop.

News travels in the blink of an eye and along with images that in the past were couriered, posted or faxed, the new power it has given us all to create, share, read, publish, and become our own authors online is astonishing.

However one of the (digital) downsides and drawbacks we feel that technology has had on photography and impacted greatly on the photographic world, is that we now shoot so many images but rarely curate them – to the extent that we are actually already in, what has been called, ‘The Century of Forgotten Images’.

We save to SD card, or hard-drive, or even CD and DVD and these images are slowly being lost, deleted or discarded. They are gone forever.

At Photographic Journeys we want to help you avoid this scenario of losing your precious work.

We want you take images and tell stories with them.

Curate them wisely and create books which we have carefully designed with the true photographer in mind.

Beautiful hand-made designs, bound in natural materials that bring back the true quality of the work that you have taken time to photograph, on expensive equipment and with our help and guidance, learn to post process and bring out the very best in the image files you select and curate.

There is nothing quite like the touch and the feel of a real book, carefully curated with your own images and hand-made and on a fine art paper.

Over 6 months in research, development and testing with our partners LoxleyColour in Glasgow have finally given us a product, we feel is genuinely like no other on the current market.

It was designed specifically to be the true portfolio and Fine-Art book that photographers will want to create, share and keep.

Creativity Has No

BOUNDARIES

MAKE AN ENQUIRY