Nat Coalson

Keynote: Photography as Fine Art

To kick off the event, Nat will talk about what distinguishes fine art photography from other genres, along with suggested methods for producing strong bodies of work and navigating the marketplace.

10:00 – 11:00 am bst

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Over the course of my 40 years in the world of photography I have evolved from being a wide-eyed enthusiast to crusty veteran, with phases as a student, fledgling aspirant, busy commercial pro, stock shooter, roving traveler, writer, teacher, tour leader, publisher, public speaker and brand ambassador along the way. Now in the midst of a global pandemic I seem to have come full circle, with my photography purely self indulgent again, just like it was back in 1980 when photography exploded into my life. It’s a liberation. Join me on a journey around the world and back in time as I celebrate my pure joy of photography; why I do it, how I do it, and why I still love it so much.

11:00 – 12:00 am bst

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Having made most of my work while travelling, it was quite a challenge to find a new approach to my photography during the Corona-related lockdowns. Instead of going outside to take pictures I had to stay inside. I rediscovered how restrictions can have a positive impact on creativity, leading to unexpected results.

Over the years I have done several restriction-based photography projects and learned to embrace the limitations. I believe any creative can benefit from working within a small number of options. During this talk I will share my experiences of working with limited possibilities and will discuss the projects that came out of it.

11:00 am – 12:00 pm bst

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In this talk Richard will talk about Platinum Printing as an alternative photographic printing process. He will cover what tools you need to start, how to edit a photograph for the process and things to consider, as well as a step by step walk through of making a print from start to finish. By the end of this session, you should have enough information to decide if you would like to have a go and make your own prints, or just to learn more about this unique and wonderful process.

12:00 – 1:00 pm bst

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Photography is a journey, alighting at various points along the way. Paul takes us on his own personal journey from his early days of using film through to digital capture. The one constant being that he is forever chasing the light.


12:00 – 1:00 pm bst

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Ray's presentation follows the steps he takes in developing work from initial concept to final exhibition.
Ray will discuss his thought processes and selection of the photographic processes and techniques to suit.
To illustrate this Ray will take the viewer through three very different exhibitions of his work.

1. Sirens - A year long project which culminated in his first book "Form and Fantasy" and a major exhibition in Birmingham UK.

2. Torsos - An Arts Council funded exhibition of mammoth prints which was exhibited at the Herbert Art Gallery in Coventry UK

3. Locked in Silver - His most recent exhibition of images of plants and flowers exhibited at Gallery Photiq in Leamington Spa UK.

All the work is analogue, ranging from mammoth darkroom prints through to liquid emulsion and finally wet plate collodion.

1:00 – 2:00 pm bst

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Martin Evening looks back over his creative career as a commercial photographer and artist and analyses the triggers that help photographers be more consistently successful when creating images.

What are you trying to say with your photography? It is so important to have a clear idea of what your message is. It might be simply the beauty of a landscape, the human body or an abstract composition. But there is also a tendency for photographers and artists to get carried away with complex compositions, where the message is confused. Are you trying to say too much?

• Getting into the groove
• Classic portraits
• Early Photoshop experiments
• Later (restrained) use of Photoshop in commercial work
• Importance of collaboration and partnerships
• Classic landscape work
• Recent landscape composite images

2:00 – 3:00 pm bst

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What makes a great digital print? Learn essential methods, tips and techniques to get the best possible quality from your digital images. Nat will explain the options and take you through the most important aspects of the professional workflow for producing digital inkjet prints with fine-art quality.

• Choosing the best media for each image
• Preparing images for printing
• Colour management
• Printing from Lightroom and Photoshop
• Sending images to a lab

This session will concentrate on fine art-quality inkjet printing, but many of the key principles apply to all kinds of digital reproduction.

Whether you make your own prints or send your images to a lab, you'll come away from this session with the knowledge and skills to ensure your prints always look the best they can.

2:00 – 3:00 pm bst

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We all want our work to stand out, but it is becoming increasingly difficult in the modern world of digital imaging where there are upwards of 400,000,000 million photos uploaded daily. But, if we stick to our guns and photograph with our hearts as well as our heads, we can rise above the sea of photographers and camera owners.

This presentation illustrates many creative ideas and techniques to set your work apart from the crowd.

We will cover multiple exposures, swipes, long exposures, panoramic photography, intro in BW infrared, and more.

3:00 – 4:00 pm bst

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Watch and listen as Dan humorously charts his life of creative explorations in Photography — always seeking visual intrigue and beauty in his final prints and photographic objects.

Dan’s Approach
“I’m constantly looking for new approaches, subject matter and chemical or digital technologies that push me into the next exciting and beautiful way to share the photographic image. Engaging both archival inks and precious metals in my prints, I try to meld modern technology with classic aesthetics to capture my surroundings, making the final print a reflection of both my personal vision and photography’s ever-evolving path.”

3:00 – 4:00 pm bst

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The great photographer Paul Strand wrote, “Above all, look at the things around you, the immediate world around you. If you are alive, it will mean something to you, and if you care enough about photography, and if you know how to use it, you will want to photograph that meaning.”

For more than three decades, Guy has been photographing the natural world. He spent much of this time exploring, researching, writing about, and teaching some of the philosophy and science of visual expression. In this talk, Guy will speak to the meanings he found in his own life and experiences in wild places, and some of the ways he found to express these meanings in photographs.

4:00 – 5:00 pm bst

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In this inspiring and enlightening session, you'll learn how Ron creates engaging, captivating fine art portraits of people around the world.

Topics will include:

• Portrait techniques
• Choosing subjects
• Backgrounds
• Posing
• Lighting
• Equipment
• Workflow
• Trip Planning

… with a special feature on photographing the Dani people of Baliem, West Papua, Indonesia.

5:00 – 6:00 pm bst

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Photography is many things to many people, but as an art it is inarguably tied to technology in ways that most other arts are not. However, in my opinion technology is the enemy of the creative, and for artistic work to emerge from photography, the technology must be kept in service to creative process. In my talk for The Art of Photography, I will discuss various types of creative process and ways I have found to keep the often bewildering technology of modern digital photography from overwhelming the creative side.

5:00 – 6:00 pm bst

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As artists who desire to make a good living from our photographs, it can be challenging to stay the true course of our personal vision and still create images that are attractive to the fine art/interior décor marketplace. In this presentation, Brenda will discuss key concepts that make images more expressive, about the importance of sticking to your personal vision, and about working with themes, creating collections or series of images. She will share insights about what photographs have worked well for her, how to develop a personal style or ‘look’ to your work, as well as ideas for creating strong graphics, moods, impressionistic and abstract images, all as a process to building a body of work that can do well in the marketplace.

18:00 – 19:00 pm bst

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Join Julieanne Kost, Adobe Digital Imaging Evangelist, for an illuminating and refreshing conversation about how she creates personal projects and self-assignments in order to cultivate essential creative habits, explore new concepts and techniques, and organize and structure projects for success.  

She will be discussing her favorite bodies of work including how she captured, enhanced and published images for her books, "Window Seat, the Art of Digital Photography and Creative Thinking", and "Passenger Seat - Telling  your Photographic Story with Adobe Lightroom from Conception to Publication". 

Then, she’ll reveal the inspiration behind “ Moments Combined” - a series of digitally composited images exploring dreams and the written word, "The Red Thread"– a look at how photography can help to see relationships between events in our lives, and "Color of Place" an exploration of the psychology of color. 

She’ll discuss her most recent “Springboard” project in which she explored 50 images by other artists that used techniques and concepts that she was not familiar with in order to expand her tool set. Julieanne will share insights not only to her creative process but also reveal how these new techniques have found their way into her own work.

7:00 – 8:00 pm bst

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Our visual familiarity is limited to colors in the visible spectrum. Beyond what our eyes can see lies the iridescent world of the infrared (IR) spectrum. Join Nevada Wier as she describes her exploration in making the invisible visible: photographing unusual places using the unusual, haunting light of infrared. “I love that I am creating an image of a subject that I can see…but rendering in light that that is invisible to my eyes; mildly surreal and metaphysical.” The resulting photographs are truly visual poetry.

8:00 – 9:00 pm bst

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My relationship with California’s deserts spans more than thirty years. Curiosity and awe combined with a deep reverence for and love of these lands has led to numerous unique bodies of photographic work and a lifetime of artistic fulfillment. I will share inspirational photographs and stories from my experiences in the land of little rain while touching on fine art printing, display, and exhibition.

9:00 – 10:00 pm bst

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