Highnam Court

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Had a cracking day out with my chums from the Royal Society to Highnam Court

I’ve uploaded a few random shots from the house which you’ll see in this set on Flickr.


Highlight of the day for me was getting access to Highnam Church where I managed to sneak in a few minutes before the place was swamped with photographers and I was able to get a handful of HDR shots including the one on the right here.

Although the house isn’t generally open to the public, if you’re interested in exploring the amazing grounds you can visit on the first sunday of the month, when it’s open for charity as part of the national gardens scheme. I’m certainly planning to visit again very soon!

Scratch N Skate..

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Nice little random afternoon down at the skate park in Cam this afternoon. For the past couple of years they’ve been organising a little music/skate/bmx event called ‘Scratch N Skate’. There were loads of kids on bikes & boards, and a few of them actually looked like they knew what they were doing too!

I’m going to add a proper sports/event gallery on here soon, but in the mean time here’s a quick peek at a few of them from myScratch N Skate set on Flickr

Practice Makes Perfect…

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For me, one of the most satisfying aspects of being a teacher is when I see a student making real progress. That’s why it’s especially nice when I get repeat bookings for training as then I can see how they are putting their new skills into practice and then help to take them futher forward still.

[frame_right src=”http://www.richardolpin.co.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/GayGilmourTrainingDay-0262-240×300.jpg” href=”http://www.richardolpin.co.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/GayGilmourTrainingDay-0262.jpg” rel=’gallery’]Gay Gilmour[/frame_right]I had a great day out today with one of my regular students, the very lovely Gay Gilmour who’s making excellent progress over the past month or so.

As she’s been out with me a couple of times recently I thought I’d step it up a notch or two today and put her in a rather more challenging setting to get her out of her comfort zone a little. Suffice to say she more than rose to the challenge and came back with a super set of photos. Well over 50 really good shots a dozen or more that would look great in a portfolio.

At the rate she’s going we’ll get her up to Royal Society standard soon (shh.. don’t tell her I said that, it’s a SECRET ;-)

Here’s a small selection of Gay’s shots from today..

[button size=”small” href=”http://www.richardolpin.co.uk/training/gaygilmour/” bg_color=”#aaaaaa” text_color=”#ffffff”]Gay Gilmour’s Training Gallery[/button]

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Bristol Harbour Festival

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Had a great day yesterday down at the Bristol Harbour Festival. I met up with some of my friends from Bristol and watched the excellent Pete Josef in Queens Square, then a little later I met up with one of my forum chums Mark Knight as he was playing with the excellent K-Passa who were headlining over on the Cascade stage. I think the last time I saw them must’ve been at least 10 years ago and they didn’t disappoint. Cracking good show, the only downside is trying to whittle down some 750 shots to a slightly more manageable number!

Anyway, here’s a few pics as a taster:
[flickr flickr_id =”83021873@N00″ set=”72157627329799300″ items=”30″]

And the main set is up on flickr. I’ll pick a few choice favourites and make a proper music gallery soon.

Bath

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Busy day today, great fun though.

I had a meeting at the Royal Society in Bath this morning so I took my camera gear and met up with some friends this afternoon to spend a couple of hours mooching around the city taking photos, see:

Bath-0588_89_90

Bath in Black and White

I’m exploring this grungy black and white stuff at the moment towards a possible project for my next RPS distinction but it wasn’t all gloom!

I did meet a very friendly cat along the way, who lived on a boat – see:

Bath-0701

A busy week of training..

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Over the past week I’ve had three new clients for my one-to-one training days, and what a cracking week we had with all three of them taking their photography forwards in leaps and bounds.

I’ll put up a gallery of some of the students work soon, but in the meantime here are a couple of the comments they said afterwards:

[frame_right src=”http://www.richardolpin.co.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/GayGilmourTrainingDay-0262-240×300.jpg” href=”http://www.richardolpin.co.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/GayGilmourTrainingDay-0262.jpg” rel=’gallery’]Gay Gilmour[/frame_right]
[quote]Hi Richard, I had a really inspiring educational day out and about with you yesterday. It has boosted my photographic confidence, taught me a lot and I can’t wait to continue further. Thanks for all your expertise, encouragement and patience[/quote]


[frame_right src=”http://www.richardolpin.co.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/MikeLowe-0578-200×300.jpg” href=”http://www.richardolpin.co.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/MikeLowe-0578.jpg” rel=’gallery’]Mike Lowe[/frame_right]
[quote]Thanks… I really had a great time, learnt alot and hopefully with practice the things I learned will become second nature.[/quote]


I’ve got several more clients lined up for the next few weeks but still have a few slots available. If you’re interested please take a look on the training pages and get in touch asap!

Getting busy…

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I’ve had quite a few requests for individual training days coming in recently so my calendar is filling up quite fast for the next couple of months! Midweek slots are still looking pretty good but the weekends in July and August are filling up quite quickly so if you are interested in booking a day do please get in touch ASAP.

To encourage the mid-week slots through the summer I’m going to extend an offer through July and August. if you book a full day’s training midweek I’ll discount it by £25, so you can book a whole day for just £150. Strictly for bookings in July/August only.

One-to-one training..

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It seems that my one-to-one training sessions are proving quite popular at the moment. I’ve had several new enquiries in the past couple of weeks which has inspired me to up my game a bit for the new students booked for later this month.

I’ve already got a load of separate worksheets which I’d made to cover photography basics such as shooting modes, exposure, depth of field etc. but I’ve decided that as the sessions are becoming more regular I’m going to revisit them and make an updated/upgraded version in the form of a couple of proper books which I’ll get printed up properly and make them available at a small fee to attendees on the training sessions.

As mentioned over on the training pages until the end of June I’m offering one-to-one training at a reduced rate equivalent to a place on a group workshop, that’s saving about 25% over the usual price. Applies to bookings made until the end of June only so if you’re interested please get in touch asap.

Making an exhibition of myself

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Richard Olpin pictured at the Broadwalk Arts Exhibition

For the next couple of weeks myself and some photographic chums from Bristol have taken over the space in Broadwalk Arts to exhibit some of our photos.

In addition to myself there are a fantastic selection of photos from the magic picture boxes of Maureen Arnaiz, Tanya Hazell, Tash Jones, Christine Lewis, Goncalo Martins, and Richard Williams.

It’s been quite an interesting experience so far, proper comedy setting up on sunday which mainly involved me faffing around for about three hours and then sorting everything out in about 10 minutes flat right at the end of the day.  Having popped back on monday morning to tidy up I had a sudden realisation of how I *should* have done things first time round. Suffice to say next time it’ll be a lot easier.

About half of the photos I’ve got on display were from my LRPS panel, the rest are a few I thought might be of interest to the locals including a few of my severn bridge shots etc.
When I got my confirmation letter from the Royal Society they sent a press release to send out to the local press so I asked my friend Gonzo (Goncalo Martins Photography) to take a few pics at the exhibition to send along with the release. Probably won’t be quite as pretentious as the one on the right here, but it’s fun all the same :)

The man from the RPS, he say “Yes!”

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Phew, am I glad that’s over!

So today I had my panel assessed by the Royal Photographic Society and I’m chuffed to bits to say that after a very nerve-wracking morning I was recommended for my LRPS distinction.

I’ve got to wait for my confirmation letter from the RPS council and when that arrives I’ll stick up a page with some more details of the process. The main thing is a review of your portfolio by a panel of expert judges, which comprises five Fellows of the Royal Society.

My panel consisted of a selection of some of my recent photos. They weren’t necessarily my favourite shots, but rather a selection which I felt showed an appropriate cross-section of my skills which is quite an important requirement of the L panel.

I don’t mind admitting I was bricking it about today!

It’s mad, I’ve done all sorts of scary things over the years ranging from all the crazy martial arts competitions to dangling off cliffs and throwing myself out of planes. None of them even came close to how nervous I was about this.  It didn’t help the fact that mine was the last panel assessed this morning. Each panel takes about 10-15 minutes for the assessment and there were 14 assessed before mine came up.  We were coming up to lunchtime and at that point they were about 50/50 on successful recommendations. It was about 1pm so I figured they were about to have a lunch break when the distinctions manager said ‘just one more before lunch..’ and then I saw my first image go up… Gulp.. “this is it”

After the longest 15 minutes of my life the chairman announced  that I was successful and they were going to recommend me for the distinction.

Cue one very happy chappy indeed.

I was really quite pleased with the feedback they gave me. They were pretty complimentary about the individual shots. The only area they had some small criticism was in the layout of the panel itself (i.e. which image goes where) which was the main thing I’d already identified as a weak point  and so I was very happy  that I was clearly thinking on the right lines and the actual quality of my photography was up to standard.  Interestingly, the one shot I thought was a bit weak was picked out as one they really liked!

[button link=”http://www.richardolpin.co.uk/my-lrps-panel/” color=”#000040″ text=”light”]View my successful LRPS panel[/button]

Nerves aside, it was a great experience and I’ve learned a huge amount from the panels I’ve seen over the past year or so and it’s given me a lot to think about for the future.

So, what’s next on the agenda?

Well the next step up the RPS ladder is the Associate level Distinction. I’ve got a lot to learn before I’m up to that standard but with what I know now I can see that’s going to be a fairly major project which is certainly going to take many months of work and hence it’s a good goal for next year.  It’s a very different mentality needed for the Associateship as it’s very much more an appraisal of your personal style rather than the predominantly technical assessment for the Licentiate award.  I think that I need to work on some more in-depth projects to get a feel for the area I’d like to specialise on for that one and then it will be a specific project in itself just for that panel. My early thoughts are that I may look at doing some documentary style street photography but anything’s possible. More news on that as I begin to form a plan.

Right now though I need a couple of days chillspace and to crack on with some projects for the day job!  Some of that will be web-stuf for the school so I may well be blogging about them here if they’re appropriate.

Watch this space..