FIRST WORKSHOP OF THE YEAR

I kicked off 2018 with my first workshop of the year the other week. It’s going to be an exciting year with workshops in Tuscany, Iceland and Italy, as well as trips to Lofoton, and possibly more planned so far. I always enjoy meeting new people, and sharing locations and photography tips with workshop participants is one of the best parts of the job. This time it was a local workshop with some time spent shooting on the west coast, a sunrise at Vasco da Gama bridge and then some street shooting around the old neighbourhood of Alfama.

We had some fantastic light and skies out on the coast for the first nights' shooting, and as no-one was in the mood for any climbs or hikes to some of the more wild beaches, we took it easy at the lighthouse of Cabo Raso.

The following dawn was about as cold as it gets in Lisbon with fresh clear skies at sunrise. It would have been nice to have some clouds but I seem to be jinxed with this location as every time I go there skies seem to be clear. We shot the bridge from the southern side in the pre-dawn including the piers in the composition, then as the sun was coming up, moved under the bridge to the north side where the composition is slightly different. Here there are no piers, the bridge is curving away from you, and the sun rises behind the shape of the bridge which allows you to create sun stars.

We then walked down through Parque das Nações, did some long exposures of the outside of Oriente station to blur away the traffic and pedestrians before heading to my studio to have a look at some processing tips. Lunch was in a traditional restaurant in the old neighbourhood of Alfama, followed by an afternoon spent wandering the local streets looking for interesting ways to capture the city before we finished the day with dinner at one of my favourite restaurants