This course was organised by Lacock Photography in the village of Lacock, Wiltshire.
The Landscape Photography Course is described here on their website.
The tutor for the course was Robert Harvey. Robert had recently presented at our Camera Club his experiences “In the desert”.
The forecast weather for the two days in Wiltshire was for torrential rain on the first day. The course structure was amended to have the first day in the studio with the classroom sessions and the second day for all the scheduled field trips.
First day Saturday 2nd November 2019
We parked on the street by The George Inn and then walked back along Cantax Hill. On the right is a small steep road that goes up past the The Old Chapel to Lacock Photography.
The six attendees and Robert were welcomed to a large ‘classroom’. The first cups of tea of the day were very welcome. We then settled down for the day’s sessions.
These did not disappoint as many aspects of landscape photography covered using images and Robert’s explanations. Throughout the day Robert’s images were all inspiring and along with his explanations made the day incredibly enjoyable.
One of the aspects of the day that we realised was the importance of being to return to sites early or late in the day, to capture different weather, positions of the sun or moon and even returning at night.
In the middle of the day we had an excellent lunch.
During the day Robert told us about his planned book on photographing Wiltshire which he hoped to have published early in 2020. This would be part of the series of books that I use to help me when visiting North Wales or Dorset published by Fotovue.
The changed schedule was definitely a good idea as throughout the day we watched the rain falling and occasional it was indeed torrential!
Evening in Chippenham
We chose to stay in Chippenham rather than drive back to Berkshire. Lacock Photography did have an adjacent guesthouse for anyone not wanting to leave the village.
The short drive to Chippenham was made a little more difficult due to the torrential rain still falling. The Angel Hotel’s car park is a at the back of the hotel and is easy to find. We had to walk through the new building to get to recpetion. This meant crossing a large open space from one building to another. This was a dark and not helped by the twisty path and of course the rain! Our rooms were back in the new building on the ground floor.
Our first stop was to The Flying Monk pub outside the hotel in the pedestrian area at the front of the hotel.
Further up the pedestrian area we went to the Royal Ashoka for our evening meal. The curry was excellent.
The rain had eased and we had a short walk around parts of the town centre.
The hotel’s bar was rather under whelming band was soul-less. We sat in an alcove next to a TV and had another pint. When we returned the glasses to the bar we looked at the gins on offer and the barman kindly let us check out this interesting gin more closely.
