The dates are Sunday 29th November 2009 and Sunday 6th December 2009. The day costs £35 per person and will include a light buffet lunch.

All the details can be found here.

There are 15 places on each course, but I have had a fair few inquiries before I was able to confirm the dates so I am hoping the places get booked up. If anyone has any questions about the course, then just let me know.

So my challenge that I am setting myself is to finally learn off camera ’strobist’ style lighting. It’s something I’ve been wanting to learn for ages but have never really set my mind to it. So it’s about time I did it.

For the type of photography I am interested in most, which is wildlife photography, flash doesn’t play a big part in it, so it’s something I have never really had to learn. Now the evenings are getting darker and colder and there is less wildlife about, it’s a great time to learn something new.

So, first things first.

What is off camera ’strobist’ style lighting?

Well, the term strobist comes from a web site set up by a photographer called David Hobby which was all about using small flashguns to light the image. So basically creating studio lighting effects with single or multiple cheap flashguns that aren’t attached to your camera.

Just check out these web sites for more info:

Strobist blog

Strobist Flickr Group

So if you’ve looked at those sites, you should now know what I mean when I say ’strobist’ style lighting.

So where do I start? What is my plan?

Well first of all I need to get the right equipment, so I need to do a bit of research. The perfect place to start is the Lighting 101 section of the strobist site.

That tells me I need a flashgun (I’m going to start off with only one flash to keep things simple) and a way to trigger that flashgun. That is all you need to get going.

I already have a few cheap Centon flashguns, but they don’t really give the control I am after, and my Sigma flash seems to be playing up and is not proving to be reliable, so it’s time to get a ‘new’ flashgun. Now, I don’t want to spend hundreds of pounds here, so a brand new all singing all dancing flashgun is out of the question. So second hand is an option, so it’s off to ebay.

Unfortunately, thanks to the success of strobist, cheap flashguns with the control you need are very hard ot find or very pricey, but there are a few bargains to be found if you are lucky. I wasn’t lucky and my search for various Nikon SB-xx flashguns wasn’t going well. I then read about the Vivitar 285HV which the strobist site recommends as a perfect flashgun for this sort of lighting. A bit more searching and I found a new one for just over £70. A bit more than I wanted to pay, but at least I know I have the right tools for the job. So that got ordered and will hopefully arrive in the next week.

So, that’s the flashgun sorted. Now, how do you trigger it?

There are lots of ways to trigger a flashgun that isn’t mounted on the camera. You can use the on camera flash and a slave module fitted to the flashgun which detects when the on camera flash fires. You can use a cable that connects the camera to the flash or you can use remote triggers.

After a bit of research and a lot of reading, I went for a set of cheap radio triggers sold by a company in Hong Kong called Gadget Infinity. They produce a radion trigger called the Cactus v4 and you can read lots about them on flickr and other forums. While they aren’t the best and most reliable, they are great for learning and most of all cheap.

So, I have spent £100 or there abouts, which is a bit more than I would have liked to, but when you look at the sort of photos that you can achieve with a simple set up like this, I don’t think it’s too much to pay compared to a lot of photographic accessories you can buy these days.

So my equipment for this challenge consists of:

Sony Alpha a700 DSLR

A Tamron 28-75 f2.8 lens

A Vivitar 285HV flashgun

A Cactus V4 transmitter and receiver set

Rechargeable batteries are very useful too, but fortunately I already had a few sets of them.

So that’s the equipment, now how do they work together. Well once the flash gun arrives and I can set it all up, I will post the next stage in the challenge: Making it work.

This is very much dependant on the weather though, if it’s chucking it down then it might be best to postpone it. I’ll keep an eye on the weather during the week and keep you updated.

For those that have emailed me saying they are interested, I’ll be sending out some info this week.

It all looks to be ok now, and I hope no one was trying to book a place on the photo course during the downtime.

There are plenty of spaces left, by the way, so please book your place if you wish to attend.

So I am sorry I couldn’t get one organised.

But, September will give me the chance to run a course. Sunday September 20th will be the next course. There will be 15 places available, a buffet lunch and hopefully dry weather but who knows what the weather will do for the rest of the year? Click here for more info on the course.

I am also going to plan a trip to Chester Zoo on Saturday September 19th. Now for this I need to get atleast 15 people in order to get a discounted entry fee, so please let me know if you are interested so I can work out the numbers. It will only cost the entry fee, which at most will be about £15 but I hope to get it down to about £12 if the group is big enough.

If you have any questions about either of these activities, just let me know, but please be aware that from 22nd August to September 12th I will not be able to respond as I will be out taking photos in the Canadian Wilderness, far away from any internet connection or mobile signal…. BLISS!!

DS Colour Labs is the place. I used them for all my example prints on the photography basics courses I do. The quality of the print is fantastic whether it’s black and white, spilt toned or full colour and best of all you can do it all online.

So if you are wanting to get some large prints done for your wall or for gifts then give these people a try.

There were a few people I’d met before on my photography basics courses and a few new faces. All enthusiastic and nice people which was good. I hope they all got some great shots and will be entering the photo competition.

I did remarkably well and didn’t lose anyone along the way, which is always a bonus, I managed to tweet a little bit throughout the walk but must admit I spent most of the walk talking rather than taking pictures, which is no bad thing.

I had one minor disaster. I managed to set my camera to the lowest image quality for about half an hour without realising, so I have a few low quality jpegs of things, but fortunately no award winning pictures were ruined because of it.

I’ll be putting some thought into running some more photo walks, as it sounds like it will be a popular activity. Chester Zoo will be next, and I’ll get details of that one up on the site very soon.

So, thank you to all those who made it along to the photo walk, please keep in touch and if you have any ideas for another walk then just let me know.

I’m looking forwards to the day, even if it does rain, and hopefully there will be around 15-20 photographers turning up for it.

I’ll be tweeting throughout the walk and will try and post a few pictures taken with my phone too.

So, 2.5 hours to go, the clouds are lifting a bit and it’s not raining yet. Stay tuned.

Also don’t forget the photo walk on July 18th, the more people come along the better.

There are, however, a couple of places left on the 28th June if anyone is interested.

I will be running another course in July, and one in early August, but I’ve still got to confirm the definite dates.