I recently had the opportunity at short notice to attend a Photo-impressionism workshop with Kim Westerskov. I have done a couple of workshops with Kim in the past and they are always a great stimulus to creativity. This one was well removed from my usual type of photography so was a good nudge out of a rut. Kim’s one day workshops run from 9 to 5 so it was an early trip up on a very icy winter road to Tauranga. As usual we spent the first part of the day in discussion around images and various techniques of capturing impressionistic images, with Kim illustrating the points from his large archive of photos. Morning tea and lunch catered by Viv was excellent as usual.

After lunch we spent a bit of time in the garden trying the techniques and then headed back indoors for a post-processing session using Adobe Camera RAW as the starting point. The interesting thing was that we all felt that we had not captured any useful images until we got them up on screen when the potential of some images was obvious. Mostly techniques involve slow shutter speeds with camera movement so it is a low yield pastime with many images easily rejected. Other images immediately seem to show something pleasing and are a starting point for some editing to try and create an image that conveys a feeling or emotion. Unlike some areas of photography there are no rules in photo-impressionism so it frees you to explore in any direction you want. 

The images here were all taken in Kim’s small garden with my Nikon D810 with 24-120mm lens and a polarising filter to enable slow shutter speeds at the base ISO of 64. I have since been using my FujiX100s (which is ideal as it it has a built in ND filter), Fuji XT1 with 35mm f2 lens and  Nikon D500 with 300mm f4 PF lens. The mirrorless bodies are ideal for this type of image but the Nikon is better on birds due the far more capable autofocus. These images are those taken on the workshop. We have a follow-up session this week and I am looking forward to seeing what images have been made. I have had huge fun doing my “homework” images and will share some of them next week.