Andy Rouse Photography Workshop

What does a Warwickshire Wedding Photographer do in his spare time? Amongst many things, this chap likes nothing more than to continue shooting with his camera. A few blog posts ago I mentioned that I attended an excellent wildlife photography workshop run by Andy Rouse. I first met him many years ago at a talk he gave organised by Cheltenham Camera Club. He certainly gave an entertaining show, and I've followed him closely ever since including reading his blog, buying his books and staying up to date on Facebook.

He writes regularly in national photography magazines and has won numerous awards internationally including featuring often in the 'Veolia Wildlife Photographer of the Year' which I've visited several times at the Natural History Museum in London. So you could say he knows what he's doing with a camera. But would he be any good running a workshop? I signed up for his Owl Workshop which was based at the British Wildlife Centre in Surrey. The staff at the centre were brilliant, really friendly and very professional especially when handling the owls. Speaking of which, they were GORGEOUS, all of them. (Before the muesli-eating, hairy-armpitted, folk dancing tree- and animal-huggers all get flustered and righteous, I'd like to state that all of the owls used were captive creatures and weren't harmed or stressed in any way).

At the start of the session we all had lunch together where Andy ran an open question session. It was really interesting listening to other photographers talking about their passion. Andy then ran through how the workshop was going to be structured including naming all of the birds; Tawny, Barn (both in flight and portrait), Long and Short Eared. I was looking forward to the portrait work, but a bit worried about the flight sequences. The night before the workshop I buried my head in my camera manuals trying to learn the intricacies of focus tracking, but boy oh boy my head exploded with confusion due to the complex options available. Fortunately, Andy likes to keep things very simple, which was a massive relief to all of us.

So how did it go? It was a brilliant afternoon, with memory cards continuously filled. It has to be said that Andy's sense of humour is an acquired taste, but his passion is there to be seen, and his feedback and tutoring was excellent. I officially sucked at shooting the owls in flight coming towards me, but not too bad otherwise. Andy spotted that I was having problems, and gave me some excellent advice which I'd love to try again in the future.

If you are reading this blog post thinking about attending one of his workshops, then go for it, you will have a brilliant time. Andy himself heads off on another trip abroad soon, we can follow his travels via his blog on www.andyrouse.co.uk . The workshop took place just a few days after my final two weddings of the summer, which means I've hardly had any time to look at my images from the workshop, however here are a few that I've processed. Back to normal wedding posts shortly. Live with passion everyone. 

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