Photographers – David Nightingale – Chromasia Photography Training and Workshops

A day of one to one photography training with David Nightingale

I spent a day last year on some photography training with David Nightingale who runs the Chromasia website. I’ve long been a fan of Davids as I just love his unique style of shots and the fact that he enjoys a wide variety of images, from weddings, through portraits and into landscapes. I remember him saying that he’d probably never tire of taking photographs while wandering across a beach, undoubtedly something I’d share with him.

So we spent the morning wandering across Fleetwood beach a place seen many times on his photo blog. We talked about about photography in general, lots about composition and seeing an image before taking it. He takes a lot more shots lying down than I do so I gained a somewhat different perspective as well as using a cheap spirit level in the hotshoe mount and holding the camera just above the ground. Then discussed more about business, blogs, his upcoming work with Chase Jarvis, and  monetising an online photography presence.

In the afternoon we did a review of some of my images over coffee and a cup cake, and then on to an afternoon of post processing. This is where I gained most value. Davids images contain a significant amount of post processing and his work with HDR photography led me to sign up for his tutorials some years ago. The image of Blackpool Pier and Tower on his website is probably one of the most striking HDR images I’ve seen, having tried to reproduce it myself as a learning exercise, its an incredibly complex process. Details of this can be found in his book on HDR. Probably the key lesson for me here was the use of layered gradients and curves and how some simple techniques can be applied over and over to build up a more complex photograph.

I’ve added a few images taken on the day, that hopefully do his style justice.