Meet the tutors
Chiz Dakin is a successful landscape and travel photographer nominally based in the Peak District, but working anywhere there’s good light and views. Having gained an unexpected chance early in the millennium to indulge a lifelong dream, she is rapidly building a reputation for stunning landscape, mountaineering and travel images.
She combines a passion for photography with a love of the outdoors and outdoor activities, and is never happier than when the search for awesome light pays off. Whether its on a commissioned trip to photograph the Northern Lights, summiting snowy alpine peaks or in her home playground of the Peak District, she tries to impart a sense of the conditions she experiences in her photographs – icy cold conditions on a freezing mountain, warmth of a tranquil sunset over misty hillsides or even abstract patterns of an arctic stream in melt.
Jason Friend is an award winning landscape and travel photographer based in the UK. He shares his passion for the outdoors with a love of photography, and has long been venturing into hostile wilderness to capture images of landscapes in a truly natural state. A keen hiker, Jason often follows overnight tracks that take him miles from the nearest signs of civilisation.
His images have been reproduced worldwide including The Geographical, Sunday Times Travel Magazine and Australian Geographic. In addition, he is a regular contributor to Outdoor Photography and Country Walking magazines in the UK. Jason is also the author of two books, Photographing Wilderness (GMC Publications) and The Cumbria Way (Zymurgy Publishing).
Gavin Gough is an award-winning travel photographer with several years experience as a professional freelancer. He has travelled the world, photographing in North and South America, South East Asia, the South Pacific, Australasia, Tibet and India but contends that Dorset remains his favourite location. Despite having fought off muggers in Rio de Janeiro and being held at gunpoint by Maoist rebels in Nepal his enthusiasm for travel remains undiminished and he is rarely happier than when planning his next trip.
Wherever he is, he likes nothing more than a decent cup of tea and claims that if he had a motto it would be the Japanese proverb, "A man with no tea in him is incapable of understanding truth and beauty".
Andy Latham is an experienced landscape photographer who still loves working with film, primarily on a medium format rangefinder but also increasingly on large format too. The slower processes involved really help him to develop his eye for an image.
Andy aims to take images that reflect the landscape around him, whether that be in the glorious light of a sunset or in the more subtle moments encountered in the countryside. He hopes that his work will engage a viewer and instil an appreciation of light and the beauty that it can create.
He is a regular contributor to Outdoor Photography, Photography Monthly, Practical Photography and Country Walking. In 2004 he won the coveted title of Practical Photographys "Photographer of the Year."
Jon Sparks is an award-winning freelance photographer and writer specialising in landscape and outdoor pursuits. He's passionate about walking, climbing and cycling, and indeed almost anything that doesn't involve the infernal combustion engine. Jon is a regular contributor to Outdoor Enthusiast magazine and many other publications, writes on cycling for Suite101.com, and has more than 15 books under his belt, from walking guides to a full-blown travel guidebook to Finland as well as several photographic books and the acclaimed Outdoor Photography; Better Pictures for Outdoor Enthusiasts.
Jon has considerable experience of photographic teaching and workshops, and has developed an approach that concentrates on what one is trying to say with any given photograph, rather than becoming enmeshed in technicalities. It's not that concepts like depth of field aren't important, but first you need to know why it's important.