WITH PHOTO ACTIVE.

Beat the weather
page one

As you travel with your camera, taking pictures for pleasure, you will sooner or later be faced with poor weather that will prevent you from recording the scenes around you in the normal way. But that is no reason to stop taking photographs. All you have to do is modify your thinking. Do that, and you will still be able to gather worthwhile images even on the dullest and wettest days.

A professional photographer rarely enjoys the luxury of choice as to when he or she can cover a particular assignment. When a magazine or newspaper picture editor calls and asks a photographer to go on a job, there will almost certainly be a deadline. It may be a week or a couple of days, but the pictures will be needed as quickly a possible - usually right NOW for preference.

Stage management I had to give up trying to photograph Newlyn during the day - the heavens opened and the light was dreadful, but by going out again before dawn to a pre-planned spot on the quay side, I was able to put the camera on a tripod and use the mixed light of breaking day, the tungsten glow of the harbour light, and the light of an electronic flash held to one side to illuminate the lobster pot. Even the lobster pot and rope was dragged along the quay and placed just where I wanted it for the picture. There's no reason why you shouldn't arrange things to make a better composition - 'if it ain't there, put it there' - imagine you are in a studio. Just put everything back where you found it and nobody is likely to mind if you do a bit of stage management Think of locations as your studio. If a picture can be improved by moving an object, or asking a motorist to move his car, do it. Just do it politely

© Philip Dunn

All in a day's work
There was a strict deadline for the pictures of Newlyn in Cornwall, several of which have been used in this article. I had just two days to get there (it was a nine hour drive), get the pictures and get the finished results onto the Times Magazine picture desk in London. It was the middle of winter and days were short, it was raining heavily and fog was forecast. Picture editors neither care nor understand that the weather can grossly affect outdoor photography. They are interested only in getting the pictures that will brighten their pages and complete their schedules, so it is no use explaining that the weather is unsuitable. Best to just accept the job and go and make the pictures happen.

The photographers who talk grandly of only ever taking pictures of things as they are, and never manipulating a subject in order to create a picture are, frankly, talking tosh. Even a landscape photographer might be guilty of trimming a little undergrowth to clear the view for his camera, certainly he will at sometime or other 'place' figures in his pictures. So do not be inhibited about taking an active role in improving and arranging elements in the scene you wish to photograph.

When using the blue, low temperature, light of dawn or dusk, don't try to correct the blue by using warming filters (81 series). Let the street lights and other artificial lights do the job for you. They will create strong and interesting warm contrasts to the overall blue of the background.

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You will cover many aspects of making pictures happen when you come along for a photography workshop