The Art Of The Print - A Photography Retreat

Since the advance­ment of dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy more images are being tak­en than ever before but how many of us real­ly think that the fin­ished image is wor­thy of being made into a print? Print mak­ing is a skill that has been around for hun­dreds of years, but even today, there is a cer­tain val­ue and exquis­ite­ness about hold­ing that print in your hands as the pho­tog­ra­ph­er. It is undoubt­ed­ly the final step in the pho­to­graph­ic journey.

There are so many choic­es to hand both when we are inter­pret­ing our images and choos­ing the paper to print on. Many of these choic­es often serve only to con­fuse us and make the jour­ney more com­pli­cat­ed than it needs to be. Dur­ing this retreat we will of course cov­er tech­ni­cal aspects of image edit­ing, but our main focus will be on mak­ing prints that reflect your expe­ri­ence when you made the expo­sure. Is the image one that con­veys fragili­ty or sub­tle­ty in tone, or would bold colours and con­trast con­vey the best nar­ra­tive? These are all con­sid­er­a­tions we need to make.

A pho­tog­ra­ph­er has to ask how they want their pho­to­graph to ​‘feel’ when it is print­ed, and does it deliv­er that true essence that made you reach for your cam­era. Unlike many Light­room and Pho­to­shop cours­es, we want to encour­age con­ver­sa­tions about cre­at­ing prints that say a lot about you as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er along with teach­ing you the tech­niques to achieve this. There are mil­lions of image files out there on stor­age devices, but how many will be nur­tured, enabling them to become a piece of art in their own right? 

Dur­ing this pho­tog­ra­phy work­shop we will share images and dis­cuss why the image was made and how it can deliv­er a mean­ing­ful mes­sage. We will delve into the var­i­ous ways of refin­ing your images ready for print. It does not impor­tant what the sub­ject mat­ter may be, but how you can con­tin­ue your com­mu­nion with that sub­ject right through to the fin­ished print.

Most impor­tant­ly we want you to feel free to express your­self as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er and explore your indi­vid­u­al­i­ty. Paul Gal­lagher and Michael Pilk­ing­ton will be on hand to dis­cuss and work with you to make your prints come alive by shar­ing image inter­pre­ta­tion tech­niques and print mak­ing skills. The key to all of this is sim­plic­i­ty. Paul and Michael will be using approach­es that have evolved and changed over the past ten years and have been sim­pli­fied using Light­room, and Pho­to­shop. We will hold dai­ly demon­stra­tions and indi­vid­ual 1 to 1 ses­sions and will encour­age you to refine your approach.

To make this expe­ri­ence as relax­ing and enjoy­able as pos­si­ble, we have cho­sen the beau­ti­ful sur­round­ings of Char­ney Manor where you will enjoy the high­est qual­i­ty accom­mo­da­tion and fine meals which are all includ­ed. We will have our own pri­vate room in which we can meet each day, and you will enjoy evening lec­tures from Paul and Michael about their own image jour­neys and print mak­ing. Each par­tic­i­pant will return home with three A3+ fine art prints pre­sent­ed in a fine art port­fo­lio box. You will also have unlim­it­ed access to our online course Mak­ing the Print’ pro­vid­ing you with all the tech­ni­cal back­ground you will need to sup­port you in your jour­ney to mak­ing an exhi­bi­tion qual­i­ty print.

Whether you print at home your­self or send out your fin­ished images for print­ing this work­shop is equal­ly applic­a­ble to you.