Christmas Vouchers!

Posted by: Ben

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Do you know anyone who’s passionate about photography?

How about someone who you just know would really enjoy photography a whole lot more if they had the essential techniques handled. Think about your own experience; everything is so much more fun when you know what you’re doing.

We’ve taught highly reviewed private photography courses around the world. Our alumni include professional photographers, tourists with iPhones, top CEOs and celebrities even your parents would have heard of. Because most of our students are very busy, we’ve focussed on making the most time-efficient course available, anywhere. We’re grateful to be able to say that people fly in to take our Holistic Photography course. Our unique difference is that it makes a ‘life-changing’ (their words, not ours) impact on their photography, and how they see the world, in four or eight concentrated hours of one-to-one tuition.

Christmas is a busy time for us as people think about helping the people in their lives really step up their photography to the next level. Some just seem to have a good ‘eye’ with an iPhone who’d benefit learning pure photography, while others are getting a new camera for Christmas and want to get the best foundations possible so they can build their skill efficiently. Other clients buy for themselves; they have personal, artistic or financial goals with their photography they want to realise in the New Year. We’ve had clients from 8 years old through to 80!

Whatever your own reasons, and whoever you personally have in mind, we’re happy to offer these Barcelona Photography Courses vouchers to you as the perfect present this year.

Who do you have in mind?

Why give the gift of an experience over more things?

Experiences make people much happier than things (ref. Elite Daily, ‘We are the sum total of our experiences’)
The best experiences we have are when we feel like we’re moving forward and expressing ourselves. Photography courses!
Cameras and lenses break or become outdated. Knowledge only gets better with practice.
There’s no environmental footprint to practical courses, unlike the majority of material gifts.
The gift that gives back – a trained photographer is always useful at parties, weddings, for portraits and more.
For example, one student took just two half-day courses as a total beginner, and recently got paid thousands for a multi-day destination wedding.
Highly rated private, bespoke photography courses in Barcelona (Learn More Here)
The perfect present for amateur or professional photographers and especially for someone who you just know would enjoy photography.
Buy Now and get it fast. No trip to the shops or waiting for a delivery van. You’ll get a voucher you can send them by email, print for them or even share on their Facebook wall.

Get the Holistic Photography Essentials Course Now

(Four hours of 1 to 1 photography tuition, ‘Photography: The Few Things You Need To Know’ book, a year’s supply of photography advice and all drinks during the course)

Complete Your Payment HERE – £180/ 250eur

Get the Holistic Photography Plus Course Now

(Eight hours of 1 to 1 photography tuition, ‘Photography: The Few Things You Need To Know’ book, a year’s supply of photography advice and all drinks during the course)

Complete Your Payment HERE – £290 / 400eur

Any questions before you book – let me know! Ben@BarcelonaPhotographyCourses.com

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Barcelona Photography: Parc del Laberint

Posted by: Ben

Photography Locations in Barcelona – The Labyrinth Park

What?

The oldest garden park in Barcelona, designed in 1792 for an aristocrat, Joan Desvalls. It’s explorable in half a day and can be a great location for a full day’s photoshoot.

The Parc del Laberint is outside Barcelona’s centre, so is usually quiet and safe. It’s slightly busier on Wednesday and Sunday when it’s free. There’s actually a cap of 750 people per day anyway. The neighbourhood is called Horta/ Montbau.

Obviously the park gets its name from the labyrinth, but with its hedges as mangy as an old fox such that you can see straight into its interior, this isn’t a highlight; though it does make an interesting background for your photos. Maze aside, the amazing feature is the ornate but beautifully decaying stonework and water features – canals, ponds and waterfalls. These give a great feel to the photographs, especially as part of a series.

There’s a neo-classical theme, with statues of Eros, Dionysus, Ariadne and Theseus among others. The themes of love and death abound in the Horta Labyrinth park.

When?

1st April – 31st October: Daily from 10am to 8pm
1st November – 31st March: Daily from 10am to 7pm

Christmas Day, December 25th: 10am to 2pm

Last admission is one hour before closing time.

Price?

Less than 3 euros, and free on Wednesday and Sunday.

Special Thoughts?

No pets, skateboards, bikes, balls or food. The latter is obviously important if you’re planning to spend the day there. ‘I’m a diabetic who promises not to leave any litter…’

There are lots of steps, but the Parc del Laberint has been (re)designed with ramps etc for disabled access.

Where?

Address: Passeig dels Castanyers 1, 08035, Barcelona – 41°26?25?N 2°8?44?E
Metro: L3, Mundet. Green line, about 15 minutes from Placa de Catalunya. The entrance is about a five minute walk from the metro, uphill.
Bus: 27, 60, 73, 76, B19

Matsuri Japanese Festival, Barcelona

Posted by: Ben

Documentary photography is generally best done with a shorter focal length lens. This gives your viewers a greater sense of intimacy and connection with the people and events portrayed. Longer lenses may be more comfortable to use, but the effect can look voyeuristic. That said, all rules are made to be broken, and here we’ve used a Nikon 180mm f2.8 prime lens to isolate moments from the scene. The photographs were converted to black and white with the help of the VSCO Tri-X film presets as a base, and adjusted manually to taste. Keep trying to simplify your photographs down to their purest expression of composition and timing.

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More photos on the Barcelona Photography Facebook page

Holi Colour Festival Barcelona 2015 Photos

Posted by: Ben

Holi Color Festival Barcelona 2015

The Holi colour festival in Barcelona – ‘The Crazy Holy Color Party’ in other parlance – is an annual event in Barcelona that we photographers love! The Holi Festival originates from India, and has spread around the world. Worshippers and revellers alike cover each other in brightly coloured powders, so the crowd transforms from glowing white to a myriad of hues in impressive rainbow explosions. There are countdowns for this, so the photographers are standing by for these beautifully photogenic moments.

Sitare from the Holi Festival has an excellent open approach for the photographers – anyone can get access to the steps for an elevated position above the festival for free if they apply; you needn’t be an accredited professional photographer. This is excellent; we know from teaching photography in Barcelona, London and around the world that often keen, talented amateurs are just as talented as full-time pro photographers, especially with continual training to keep up to date with the latest photography techniques. The Holi colour festival proves this time and again as photographers of all levels of experience come to take photos of the colours in Carmel.

One major question they have is how to protect the camera from the coloured powder. The best solution is to use a waterproof camera or a waterproof housing so you can wash the camera afterwards. Some models, and Pentax stands out for this, make their cameras tougher and with more weather sealing than others, so they are great for taking photos of Holi colour festivals. The most popular technique is to use plastic bags and duct tape, together with a UV protective filter, to shield the camera. This can work pretty well, though it does make it trickier to compose the pictures. Many photographers simply opt for the ‘dangerous wildlife’ approach to photography; using long voyeuristic telephoto lenses to take photos of the people at the Holi colour festival from a safe distance. Other more dedicated photographers get into the midst of the fray and are necessarily rewarded with more engaging pictures.

Having done done both approaches in previous years, and with my professional flash equipment lent to one of our alumni, I brought along a white background, a large silver reflector and most importantly, a Bluetooth speaker loaded up with Clandestino by Manu Chao, and set up a mini walk-in studio. I was fortunate enough to find an assistant, Daniel Lopez (https://www.facebook.com/dadasphotography) who did a great job photographing the groups – you can see his pictures on his Facebook page. The idea with the white background was to get a clean, high key feel a la Avedon. The event itself was messy and, in the middle of the action, a blur of colour, so I used a slower shutter speed to give a sense of Impressionistic movement. The hard sunlight was used for standard butterfly lighting, with the silver reflector used for fill to brighten up the images and add an interesting catchlight to the ubiquitous sunglasses. Amusingly, a toddler with a water pistol adopted the reflector at one point as a huge frisbee, and many colourful festival-goers thought it was a shiny circular mat.

The other photographs were taken more candidly around the Holi Colour festival in Barcelona. At the sight of the camera, most groups would ask for photos and double in size as nearby party-goers joined the picture. The crowd itself, and particularly the people, aloft like Catalan castellers, who stood out above it, were photogenic and became more symbols than individuals. Certainly a great many photographers were there, so it’s with pleasure that I look at the same scenes photographed from multiple different angles as the pictures of the Holi Colour Festival appear on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Here are some of the photos from the Holi festival; you can share them with friends legally as long as the watermark stays intact. High resolution ‘fotos’ without watermarks are available too on request.

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Valencia – Las Fallas

Posted by: Ben

Every year, the people of Valencia compete to make towering hand-painted statues as tall as the buildings they nestle between. When Valencia native Modes offered to host us and show us around, we packed up the cameras and off we went!

Barcelona photography courses take photos of las fallas in Valencia

Amazing work by the Valencians, pretty straightforward work by the photographer (Ben)!

Las Fallas Valencia Photos Spain photography courses

All the work done by the sculptors, but a monochrome cyan tint adds mood

There was a lot going on, and Valencia itself is a beautiful background for the photographs. For street photography, it seemed like a mix between Barcelona and Madrid. It’s smaller than both cities, and less touristic, which was a good change.

The quest was for photographs that went beyond the normal photos that just preserved what other people had created.

If you want to know a place, focus on the people

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Focus on the details; always a useful technique

But really our favourite photos of Las Fallas didn’t just use them as subjects in themselves, but as material for artistic expression.

Symbolism has always been the basis of Art

To see all of the photos from the trip, have a look here and here!

https://plus.google.com/b/101232318994810915241/+Barcelonaphotographycourses/posts/8bFroUhh52C

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.918419778179585.1073741828.142394832448754&type=1

Photos of Gaudi’s Dragon – Güell Pavilions

Posted by: Ben

Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi created many beautiful Modernist works, mainly for his patron Guell. The more obvious tourist attractions are high on the lists of every visitors Things To Do In Barcelona such as the Sagrada Familia, Casa Batllo, Casa Mila and Parc Guell. But there are other really striking pieces of work/art that can make your pictures of Barcelona stand out from everyone elses. For example, this is Gaudi’s Dragon Gate in the Guell Pavilions in the Sarria district.

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Also well worth a visit, but further out of Barcelona, is the Colonia Guell, which paid for a lot of the other beautiful buildings around Catalunya. There’s a Crypt there too, which while worth a visit, isn’t as photogenic as the amusing named abandoned Castillo del Diablo, or the Castle of Hell, which is nearby. It’s apparently the most haunted place in Spain, if you believe in that sort of thing; either way it’s an interesting, different location for photos in Barcelona. Know more? Let us know!

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Christmas Vouchers!

Who do you have in mind?

Get the Holistic Photography Essentials Course Now

(Four hours of 1 to 1 photography tuition, ‘Photography: The Few Things You Need To Know’ book, a year’s supply of photography advice and all drinks during the course)

Get the Holistic Photography Plus Course Now

(Eight hours of 1 to 1 photography tuition, ‘Photography: The Few Things You Need To Know’ book, a year’s supply of photography advice and all drinks during the course)

Barcelona Photography: Parc del Laberint

Photography Locations in Barcelona – The Labyrinth Park

What?

When?

Price?

Special Thoughts?

Where?

Matsuri Japanese Festival, Barcelona

Holi Colour Festival Barcelona 2015 Photos

Valencia – Las Fallas

Amazing work by the Valencians, pretty straightforward work by the photographer (Ben)!

All the work done by the sculptors, but a monochrome cyan tint adds mood

The quest was for photographs that went beyond the normal photos that just preserved what other people had created.

If you want to know a place, focus on the people

Focus on the details; always a useful technique

Symbolism has always been the basis of Art

Photos of Gaudi’s Dragon – Güell Pavilions