The 2010 workshop dates are proving to be a very popular choice of a Christmas gift for the forthcoming festive season, with the South Tyneside workshop being now fully booked and only 1 place left on the Hadrian's Wall workshop.  There are however a few places left on the Whitby, Northumberland Coast and the other workshops running throughout the year.

Apart from being outstanding value for money, all group workshop participants attending during 2010 will also receive a copy of the first book by Jason Friend - Photographing Wilderness. Published by GMC Publications in 2003, it was released to positive reviews throughout the UK photographic press and led to his images being showcased throughout the world.  With a recommended retail price of £19.99, a free copy of Photographing Wilderness for every participant clearly makes the group workshops a fantastic gift! (Please note that the books will be distributed at the actual workshop. However if you would prefer the book in advance, this can be arranged for a small charge of £3.50 to cover postage and packing. The last postage date for Christmas is the 21st December).

So if you are finding it hard to decide what present to buy the budding photographer in your family, why not take a look at our range of workshops?

Just a quick post to let you know that we have reintroduced our popular e-card service - Just in time for Christmas!

Click here to send your friends an electronic postcard.

December seems to have arrived without any warning, bringing with it the promise of a new year just around the corner.  I am starting to consider my forthcoming projects for 2010 which include a number of new book commissions to work on, alongside my own personal projects such as the Fungi image featured here.

The last couple of months have found me using my Canon EOS 50D more frequently than I ever expected when I purchased it as a back-up camera for my main workhorse, the EOS 5D.  I have being using it almost exclusively for my macro images alongside another relative new piece of equipment - A Canon Speedlite flash gun.  This partnership, combined with a lot of experimentation, has allowed me to start capturing images that look like they have been shot in the studio although they have been totally captured in the field. This shot here was captured by setting the 50D to ISO 100, with a shutter speed of 1/250 second and a aperture of f18. The fast shutter speed / small aperture combination allowed me to render the background black, whilst the subject was illuminated by the strobe placed to the rear and below.  A gold reflector was used to bounce the light back into the subject.

Whilst I enjoy the freedom to express myself through my artificially lit Fungi compositions, you just can't beat the feeling of standing on Scottish mountain, capturing the play of light on a distant peak.

This image again is testament to the image quality available with the 50D. Whilst the image quality is not as good as the 5D, and it really does need the finest quality lenses to get the best from the 15MP sensor, it does prove to be a relatively small camera to use hand held whilst hiking up the hills. I will still carry my 5D for the forthcoming work on my forthcoming Cairngorm Trilogy, although I fully expect that the 50D will be used to capture a number of shots, such as this one of storm clouds above the mountain known as Stac na h-Iolaire and the image below of the frost covered ferns, again within the Cairngorms National Park

In between these projects, I will also be sharing my knowledge of these techniques, alongside many others, during the forthcoming 2010 Photography Workshop schedule. Both the January and February dates are nearly fully booked, but there are a number of places left for later in the year - And I'm always available for private '1 on 1' photography workshops.

Finally, I now have a Facebook page and I'm also starting to Twitter, so hopefully I will be able to keep you posted on everything that is happening over the next few months - and also share some more of my favourite images!