I had a very productive month for photography in February – I joined a photo workshop!

I have been following a number of photography podcasts over the last few years, in particular one by Derrick Story from California USA. His chatty and informative podcast ‘The Digital Story’ has really informed and helped me in developing my skills and understanding. Having listened to Derrick for over six years now, I was able to join in a zoom workshop he was running. The theme was making the most of using your iPhone alongside your existing camera gear.

There were four sessions, run early Pacific time so I could join in teatime UK time. I was the only Brit, others were scattered around the USA, and this made for some good chat before sessions. Derrick was a great host, and helped us explore the potential of our iPhones in a new way.

Because our phones these days often have multiple lenses, and have increased in picture quality, they can actually be used alongside more pro gear to complement, and save carrying heavy camera bags. Sometimes our phones can actually be even more useful for photography, in social settings for example; at other times there is still an advantage in having a quality camera for certain shots or for larger printing purposes. 

Anyhow we had to take a series of photos over the month, some with our phones, others with our cameras. Then we had a full day (or evening in my case) of presentations of our shoots to enable discussion and feedback – all positive and encouraging. A really great opportunity to rethink what I use to take which pictures.

So here are my images from the presentation…

Firstly a pair of images from a photo walk – I went down to Trentham and captured a good photo from my Fuji X100f in black and white mode:

Then I used the ultra wide lens on the iPhone to get a dramatic shot through the stone arches, with a passer by and her dog conveniently standing at the top:

The following week I had to take some portrait photos with both cameras. My wife Karen dutifully sat for a nice pic in our conservatory with the Fuji X100f:

My daughter Sarah agreed to come outside and pose in a blustery day overlooking the lake and visitors centre – this with the portrait mode on my iPhone 12 Pro max:

Week three involved taking a picture with our main camera and making an easy workflow uploading, editing and publishing with our iPhone. The skulls at the bottom of Trentham lake seemed a good example of what I could do with the Fuji X100f edited through the iPhone in a few short minutes:

The last two images were, for me, people shots. This one an ultra wide iPhone action photo grabbed whilst walking past the volunteer gardeners in the Italian gardens:

Finally a more sedate kind of Sunday afternoon family walk picture from the gardens, snapping passers by with the Fuji X100f:

All in all a great opportunity to join a forum of keen photographers and learn some new ways of using my gear. I thoroughly enjoyed being a Brit on this workshop 🙂 Cheers to Derrick Story for his great workshop.

Thanks for following – hope you enjoyed the blog.