I am having a few weeks vacation time with family down in Dorset England, but you never really put the camera away, even when you go out on a picnic! I have reached for my camera on a few occasions and photographed both of my Grandchildren as they relax and play and find delight in the spring weather and what if offers. My Grand-daughter Molly in particular, takes absolute delight in the spring blooms and runs into a field of them every time an opportunity arises. My favourite was today, when she saw a field of buttercups, some as nearly high as herself… naturally I got my camera out and snapped a few as she picked them and squealed with sheer joy as she ran in amongst them. I don’t do portraits often and high key work even less! but these shots were so good I found this kind of treatment to be the best way to finish them.

The famous words “Oh to be in England now that May is here” keeps ringing in my head every-time I head out to capture the wonderful spring light that sweeps across the countryside here in Dorset. I have visited some of my favourite haunts again and some new ones. The banks of the Stour river are always wonderful and so is the coastline. Here are just a few examples I have captured in the past week and it was an added bonus to still see some bluebells out in bloom as they are usually gone by the end of April. It’s all about the light and I am chasing it again with fervour.

The culmination of the five week advanced course that I ran at the SSPS clubrooms was a short practical lesson on filters, lighting, exposure compensation and basic compositional suggestions at Cape Schanck. We had thirty eight attend the classes and so everyone had the opportunity to come down to Cape Schanck both for an afternoon session towards dusk on the Saturday and a first light session on Sunday morning. We were favoured with some lovely light and I want to thank all those who attended this years course for their attention and commitment to the class. Here a couple of images I had time to grab in between helping all those who attended. My sincere thanks is extended to Greg Earl, Frank Pisani and Bob Clothier for helping out with such a large contingent of photographers!

The AIPP National and State awards are two of the very few remaining photographic competitions to actually judge the finished print and they do so using a panel of 5 judges for every section, who are all deemed experts in their respective genres and accredited as Masters of Photography through their years of success in photography. Prints are judged in a controlled lighting environment and assessed for their content, originality as well as technical craftsmanship. All the prints are scored out of 100 with images judged less than 70 are deemed not to professional standards. Prints judged between 71 and 79 are considered strong professional standards. Those images judged between 80-84 are awarded a Silver and are considered strong professional practice of an award standard. Scores of 85-89 are given a Silver with Distinction and demonstrate superior imagination, craft and skill. Prints judged 90-94 exhibit excellence in visual communication, craft technique and skill. And finally those rare few images that reach 96-100 are considered to have exceptional vision, creativity, innovation, master craftsmanship and skill. Very few prints score Gold awards in these competitions and only a tiny proportion of entries ever reach the top tier of Gold with Distinction. I entered 10 images this year with 7 achieving silver and one being awarded gold. The other 2 images I entered received 78 and 79 respectively, just missing the silver award by a fraction.

“Fotheringate” Silver award

“Reflected” Silver award

“Ghostly” Silver Award

“Golden” Silver award

“Jokulsarlon” Gold award

“Luminence” Silver award

“Serenity” Silver award

“Shadowed” Silver award

My sincere thanks goes to both Landon and Stuart at the Print Bureau in Prahran, for the wonderful job they do with all my work and especially in the choosing of the fine archival papers that suit each particular print.

My favourite printers have come through with the goods yet again… Landon and Stuart at S M L XL fine art print studio are so particular and fussy I just cannot bring myself to take my work anywhere else. As I sell my work only as limited edition prints and as an Archival product..I trust them to do this. I needed some special printing done last week for firstly: Some high quality prints to be entered into the AIPP Victorian Epson Professional Photography Awards 2015 and Secondly: I have just restored a particularly fine piece of history dating back to about 1910. It was a small postcard print and had faded and been scratched quite significantly. Stuart selected the papers to print with and so my monochrome images were printed with Canson Rag Photographique and the coloured prints were done with Ilford Galerie Gold fibre Silk.  What is so wonderful about using the lads here at the Print Bureau in Prahran, is their attention to things like always spot-checking your files, fixing where required and selecting the best paper for the job. They come highly recommended! Do yourself a favour and try them if you haven’t already…. Files can be uploaded from your computer. Visit their website for more information:    http://www.smlxl.com.au/

A full workshop again to magnificent Flinders Island last weekend. Four days of bliss, photographing the varied and most interesting weather conditions that this time of year brings to these Islands in Bass Strait. We had with us a most lovely group of people, all keen to get their camera’s out and take advantage of the incredible lighting conditions we had every day of our visit there. Keen to be up at dawn, most came out to see the light show that swept across the bays and hills of the Island. Sawyers bay and the Blue rocks turned it on for two mornings and the final dawn opportunity on Sunday, we headed up to Wireless hill and watched the sunrise over the Strzelecki range. Below are just a few of the images I took over the four days alongside my group participants…I would like to thank the group for being such a wonderful bunch and enjoying every moment of our workshop together. My thanks to our hosts Greg and Marg at the Flinders Island Cabin Park:  http://www.flindersislandcp.com.au/  A wonderful place to stay and very central, with great service and vehicle rental too! ( go on tripadvisor to see how good their rating is) I would also like to express my sincere thanks and gratitude to our lovely catering couple Ken and Carolyn: They work tirelessly to make sure we have superb meals and morning teas and the final Trouser’s Point Bar-b-que is the best ever! Truly… For all your catering needs on Flinders Island, just email: kenstockton@bigpond.com  My workshops to this Island are in their 10th year, and I still just love taking participants there to enjoy the beauty and serenity of this alluring Island. Next year I will be conducting another workshop and the dates are April 7th – 10th 2016  you can make a booking now by just simply emailing me at: ianrolfephotography@icloud.com or check the menu above under workshops and find the information there….which includes a downloadable PDF

The final few days in Bhutan enabled us to travel back westwards towards Paro at our leisure, photographing all manner of places and people throughout the countryside. I still have not been able to process a huge lot of my images as yet, but I have uploaded some that I have completed on this latest post. The last highlight for this workshop was to climb the slopes of the mountains (or take the softer option of travelling most of the way up by horseback) just behind Paro and spend a night at 10500 feet. A beautiful dusk and a hot dinner had us all soon afterwards climbing into our sleeping bags very tired, but happy to be so far up in the Himalaya’s. Chilly but so lovely, we were greeted by a magnificent sunrise and a beautiful calm day, very misty at first light, but sunny after that. The early risers had breakfast at dawn and then descended with me to the vantage point to view the stunning “Tiger’s Nest” as the misty early light gave way to full sun and daylight. Paro Taktsang is the popular name of Taktsang Palphug Monastery, a prominent Himalayan Buddhist sacred site and temple complex, located in the cliffside of the upper Paro valley. What a climax to an unforgettable adventure. Ewen Bell and myself will do another amazing Wild Bhutan workshop within the next two years. Keep a look out for this and you can register with us anytime you want.

Our second week travelling through this beautiful and serene country has seen us further into the Eastern Part of the country and in the Wangdue Phodrang Valley. Here farmers still till the land by hand, growing Potatoes and Buck-wheat. A morning walk along the quiet valley road in the sun-light and mist of a cold winter’s dawn we encounter the local folks out working, milking their cows and gathering wood to stock the fires. As the sun gets up higher in the sky we observe whole families, young and old together working the fields, animated in their discussions and with laughter echoing across the valley. One morning we spot a group of the rare and endangered Black necked Cranes, a real treat indeed. Our group quietly walked across the edge of a newly ploughed field and clicked away, edging closer and closer. The remaining Cranes took off and then flew around the valley floor twice, right over our heads before heading off into the mountains…perhaps beginning their annual journey into Tibet. the local Bhutanese farmers never hurt these lovely creatures, just another part of the Buddhist way of life, they believe the Cranes bring them good luck and happily the numbers over recent years has seen a steady increase in overall numbers.

Our Photographic workshop to Bhutan continues into the fourth day as we head out of the Punakha Valley and up into the more mountainous terrain of the Gasa region. We travel through sub-tropical rainforest with magnificent rivers and waterfalls higher up through the sub-alpine regions of the Jigme-Dorji National Park. Up in this area of Bhutan the steep hills are a marvel to behold as traditional rice farmers have tilled the precarious terraces for countless generations, growing the special red rice that can survive in this colder alpine region. Our group gets plenty of opportunities for photographing the people and the landscape. Beautiful light follows us each day and the rising mist after a sub-zero night is just breathtaking. We eventually arrive in Gasa where our specialized trekking team have set up camp… and this is where we will spend the next two nights. At over 10,000 feet it will be cold at night as it’s the end of winter and the views all around are of the snow capped Eastern Himalaya’s. We get pampered with great food and very comfortable beds with everything we could wish for. Our visit in this mountainous region includes the visit to the beautiful and very historic Gasa Dzong. As very few tourists come up into this remote region, we have the area and the Dzong with all its resident monks to ourselves. They are getting ready for a rice festival and we have the  opportunity to photograph the monks preparing the food. For two nights and just before our three course dinner, the group heads down to the hot springs where boiling water mixes with the river water and we can plunge in with the locals and steam ourselves as long as we can stand it! It’s unusual to be the centre of attention as the huge wooden tubs are all full of local and visiting Bhutanese (usually very modest) who sit and laugh with our guides as they explain that yes, we (foreigners)  love hot mineral spa bathing too! Again we are over-whelmed at how friendly and peaceful the Bhutanese people are and how magnificent the country they live in presents itself through our lenses!  As I mentioned in my first post about this Workshop… Ewen is processing his images each day and loading them up so fast! He amazes me… I process differently to Ewen, but would still love to have his ability to complete tasks so quickly!! ( To see Ewen’s images go to: Instagram https://instagram.com/photographyfortravellers/ or visit the website as he will have this trip loaded soon! ) As I only seem to get  a few at a time completed… here is a few more images that I have been able to finish. All participants on this workshop are shooting loads of great images each day and we spend most evenings critiquing and helping those who don’t fall into bed photographically exhausted, to do some post-processing examples.

The photographic workshop that Ewen Bell and myself had decided to run in Bhutan this year filled to capacity without any trouble at all, and so eight participants from various parts of Australia and one from both Indonesia and England came together in Bangkok and we flew into Paro to start our “Wild Bhutan” adventure. Our initial travels took us from the capital Thimphu up over the Dochela pass with magnificent views across the Eastern Himalaya’s. I had already glimpsed them from my window seat of the plane, touched with winter snow and they are a sight to behold. Our first part of the journey is to stay in the area around Punakha and take in the amazing winter festival held at the Punakha Dzong (Buddhist temple) Three days of riotous colour and twirling dancers, with the locals dressed up in their stunning dress is just beautiful. A lovely quiet people who never push or are loud in their behaviour is very touching. During this three days of observing and madly photographing all aspects of this wonderful event, we took the group to other intersting sights in the valley and made sure we always got some part of the festival each day of our stay here. After this, we move on upwards in to the real wild part of Bhutan, which incidentally is 60 percent protected forests and National park, home to Snow Leopards, monkeys, Tarkins, Eagles, Vultures, Owls, numerous other colourful birds, tigers and common Leopards. I will post more images of our adventure into this lovely region soon…. But running a workshop does not give you much spare time and I process images a lot slower than Ewen!!…check out his wonderful images on Instagram https://instagram.com/photographyfortravellers/  The images below are just a few of the many I have shot here…enjoy!