Introduction

Style development and portfolio development are one and the same. They utilise the same common skills. If you learn to build a strong portfolio, you also become a stronger photographer because portfolio creation informs your fieldwork and edit sessions. You begin to see themes in your work.

During our time together we will be based in the north west of the Scottish highlands in the beautiful area of Wester Ross. We will be in a classroom most of the time, either editing our work to make it stronger as a portfolio, or out in the landscape gathering new material to help build that portfolio.

Please note: This workshop is not about learning a software application. Instead, its aim is to teach you how to interpret your work and improve your skills at 'seeing' and recognising themes in your work.

Workshop Format

Here is a breakdown of the format of the week-long workshop.

Introduction talk

I will walk you through how I create my own portfolios by showing you how I find themes in the work that I've shot, and how I select which images to work on with a portfolio in mind. I will also show you how I edit the images so that they become tighter as a set.

For the rest of the week, we will work on creating / tuning our portfolios in the following way:

Selection Process

We will start with an initial selection process, where we consider what themes are present in the initial work. We will recognise themes and choose which to work towards in the edits.

Initial Editing Process

With our initial selection process done, we will begin editing to bring out the themes and tones we see in the work.

Review Process

After the initial editing has been done, we will review the poerfolio in a group setting. I will give some feedback and further advice on what I think needs to be worked on to improve the portfolio.

Re-Editing Process

Taking on board the review comments and anything that requires further tuning, we will re-edit to make any themes or tonal palettes stronger in the work.

Re-Review Process

As you can tell by now, creating a portfolio is an iterative process. We edit, review, edit, review, and repeat this until we feel we are complete with the work.

Digital Darkroom skills

As part of creating a strong portfolio, we will work on developing our editing skills. We will cover the following principles:

• learn to understand tonal relationships in the work
• understand the luminosity values in our work
• Use appropriate software tools to enhance our work.

As some light relief from our time in the classroom, during the evenings we will have the opportunity to shoot the surrounding Wester Ross Scottish highland landscape.

Informal Group Setting

Bruce likes to run his photography-workshops in a friendly, intimate group setting. This trip has a maximum group size of six.

Unlike a lot of workshops with up to 12 or 16 people on them, running with a smaller number allows everyone to have space in which to photograph. It also means more quality time for Bruce with each participant.