Student feedback

Below are some comments from students who have recently completed introduction to wildlife photography courses. Their comments are beneath their image montages. Please click for larger versions.


"I've had a Canon 40D and a 100-400m lens for about a year now but it's fair to say I've used the camera mainly on automatic. I needed to familiarise myself with the equipment and Maurice's course enabled me to do that. Practice in the field using manual settings, aperture priority and various ISO settings was invaluable and Maurice was always on hand to give advice and answer any questions. The course also opened my eyes to the huge part the computer can play in digital photography and we had the opportunity to use photoshop to improve and manipulate our shots." Phil Hargreaves



"I joined the photography course as I was a complete beginner never having owned or handled an SLR camera before. After the first session I was able use my camera on manual settings changing the light settings, the aperture and the ISO number where appropriate. At the next session we put into practice what we had learnt previously with a shooting session outdoors.
During the rest of the course we looked at other aspects of digital photography. The explanations were clear and backed up by fact sheets. Maurice is a very knowledgeable and competent photographer and teacher. The course was thouroughly enjoyable and has filled me with enthusiasm for the subject." Claude Hargreaves



"I found the course very useful as it refreshed a lot of photographic knowledge gained in the good old days of film and self developing prints. It also linked it well to using a DSLR. I now virtually always use manual setting on my camera particularly as I managed to update to a D300s. Probably wouldn't have had the confidence to do that without your course.
The Photoshop was interesting. Never really used preferring Graphic Converter which seems to do a lot of the Photoshop things in a slightly different way. However, have bought Elements 8 and am now using that quite happily, extending the knowledge you gave every day."
Mike Williamson



"Maurice's course really opened my eyes to what I could do and I'm now friends with my camera - there's more to life than the automatic settings!" David Ware

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Hi Maurice

Wth regards to the camera course I would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone who needs to gain confidence in operating a digital camera.

I acknowledge that it is an introduction to digital work but it certainly gives everyone confidence to 'have a go'. One of the important messages you put across is that you must experiment and push the buttons on the camera in order to find out about its features and capabilities. This, coupled with your technical - yet simple - explanations of operating the camera was excellent.

All in all a very worthwhile course and one that I enjoyed very much.

Best Wishes,

Keith Marshall

High Summer Butterflies

Above a beautiful female Brown Hairstreak from the Hampshire/Wiltshire borders perched on Rosebay Willowherb. I was fortunate to find such a pristine individual showing so well. The male Brown Hairstreak has very similar markings on the underside but lacks the vivid colour of the female. Below a striking male Adonis Blue from a chalky Berkshire hillside, a first for me this year. It is certainly true that once you have seen Adonis Blue, even the brightest Common Blue looks pale by comparison! The camera does struggle though to capture the true sky blue iridescence as the sun hits the wings.

Introduction to Digital Photography Course

This course would suit those with digital slr cameras and even the most basic lenses who would like to develop their photographic skills. However, a separate dedicated flashgun would be useful. During the course I will aim to clarify the reciprocal factors involved in achieving correct exposures with a view to students being able to take full manual control of their cameras. The course runs over seven weeks with weekly two hour sessions and costs £100 per student.

Week one is a "classroom" photographic theory session held at Tophill Low nature reserve. Weeks two to six, depending on the weather conditions, will include a photographing people session, a wildlife photography session, a mid-course classroom photoshop session, a street photography/architectural session, a landscape session and concluding with a final photoshop session.

The course will look at composition and cropping, depth of field and how to control it, flash techniques, low light photography and also how to get the most out of your images using photoshop and the digital darkroom.


For further details please contact me on 07866 316577 or e-mail: info@mauricephotos.co.uk

Portraiture Course

This course will look at photographing people both on location and in a studio environment. The course runs weekly two hour sessions over five weeks and costs £100 per person. The course would suit those who have been on one of my introductory courses or those who have good basic photographic knowledge. I will provide studio lighting, backdrops and computer equipment for our indoor sessions. Course aims are also to look at resizing images for the smallest everyday print to a very large canvas. We will also look at creating digital photo montages such as the one above.

A dedicated external flashgun will be required for outdoor shooting for results as below, though students will be able to make use of my equipment if they don't currently own one.







For further details please contact me on 07866 316577 or e-mail: info@mauricephotos.co.uk

Street Photography Course

This seven week course will concentrate on the fun and the spontaneous, creating well composed and well exposed images from daily life and would suit photographers who have been through one of my introductory courses or who already have a good working photographic knowledge. Each weekly session lasts for two hours and we will visit different locations or local events suitable for candid and reportage style shots. The course costs £100 per student. We will have a mid-course photoshop session and a final week photoshop session to review and enhance images and with five weeks of shooting there should be plenty of good images to sort through!

A lens such as a 70-200mm zoom would be ideal for this type of photography though a wide angle zoom will also be useful. The aim will be to travel as light as possible.

For further details please contact me on 07866 316577 or e-mail: info@mauricephotos.co.uk

North Yorkshire Moors photo trip

I am organizing a trip primarily to photograph Dark Green Fritillary and Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary butterflies on the North Yorkshire Moors, near Pickering, on Sunday 4th July meeting at 10.00am - weather permitting! Cost will be £15 per person. I will be on hand to give advice and attendees are welcome to borrow my Nikon camera equipment. Your own compact flash memory card would then be useful to pop in my cameras so you could take your images home with you. Both closeup/macro lenses and telephoto lenses are useful to photograph these butterflies. Compact digital cameras with macro capabilities would also work well as the Dark Green Fritillary in particular is quite a large butterfly.

Please click on the photo montage above for a larger version. All these photos were taken on the North Yorkshire Moors. We will be likely to see Dark Green Fritillary (pictured top), Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary (two images below), Whinchat and Golden-ringed Dragonfly (third row down). Also likely to be present are Small Copper, Small Skipper, Small Heath and Large Heath butterflies. The walk is over even moorland paths and we won't need to cover great distances to see the wildlife.

If you would like to continue your day out, Goathland, Whitby, Thornton-le-Dale, the Dalby Forest and many places of interest for sightseeing, lunch and walking are all nearby. For those interested in going on to look for Red Grouse after lunch (please bring a packup) you are welcome to follow me in your own car to another site on the moors where we will hopefully see Grouse by the roadside.

Attendees will have to make their own way to the meeting site near Pickering on the day. Please call or e-mail if you would be interested in the North Yorkshire Moors trip: photography@mgcvk.karoo.co.uk / 07866 316577.

Skomer trip

Some photos of the Puffins on Skomer island just off the Pembrokeshire coast. A fantastic place to visit in spring and summer, packed full of wildlife although of course the Puffins are the stars. The birds on the island permit close views and are wonderful to photograph. I believe the Short-eared Owl was dining on the local delicacy Skomer Vole!