The Alchemist’s Workshop at Grizedale is a black and white photography treasure trove.
Adorned with prints, of various sizes, of Steven’s analogue (film) photographs, the old school cameras used to capture the images and a range of specialist photography books and magazines, the gallery is an interesting and relaxing place to browse whatever your interest in photography.
Steven also has a darkroom which is available for use for members of the public or for those attending one of his courses and there are lovingly restored Olympus Trip cameras (which he refers to as his ‘restyled beauties') for sale or hire.
Perhaps the best feature of the whole workshop is Steven himself.
Extremely knowledgeable, Steven also enjoys what he does and enjoys sharing that enthusiasm with others, whatever their knowledge/expertise of photography. So next time you're in Grizedale drop in for a chat with Steven and peruse his Aladdin's den of photography.
If you are interested in taking photographs in the forest then you can either rent one of Steven’s Olympus Trip cameras, buy a film and develop it yourself or sign up for one of his excellent workshops.
Steven describes his workshops better than I could so here is a post taken from his
blog:
‘If you are totally new to photography, even if you’re not serious about continuing, if you just want to play, you think it could be the start of something big, you’re a practiced film photographer, darkroom worker or you are a “dyed in the wool” digital photographer who wants to put some foundation to your knowledge, we have something for you.
All workshops are Saturday and Sunday 10am to 5 pm
Beginner’s Black and White Darkroom.
If you’ve never been in the darkroom before, or only when you were at school and you can’t remember that far back. If you would like to experience and practice “alchemy” in the 21stCentury, it really is like magic, this is for you. We’ll make photograms and some camera pictures, develop the film, make contact prints, and beautiful finished prints, all your own work to take away and show your friends that you have found the Philosopher’s Stone.
Bring your own 35mm camera if you have one but we have one for each delegate if you don’t.
£150 per person plus materials.
11th and 12th May
Darkroom Refresher (The Fine Print).
This assumes you have some experience of working in a darkroom, you might not have done it for years but you will remember that if you switch the light on without warning you will ruin everybody else’s work, or you might have your own darkroom and print everyday. We will take your printing to the next level, teasing the best from your negatives. We will talk about how to achieve better negatives as well. We will look at some rescue remedies for when the conditions or our own failings let us down and we will look at how we can make prints that are archivally stable.
£150 per person plus materials.
8th and 9th June
Black and White Landscape on Film.
The Alchemist’s Workshop is ideally situated in Grizedale Forest in the heart of The English Lake District. We are surrounded by beauty. This workshop looks at the tradition of the romantic landscape. We are all about film and black and white film at that. Monochrome workers have a long established relationship with the landscape. This workshop will explore that, theoretically, by looking at the history, but predominantly practically by getting out and doing it. We will use a range of film formats, even pinhole and, of course we will return to the darkroom to tease out our fine prints for you to take home. You can bring your own film cameras or use ours.
£150 plus materials
15th and 16th June
Olympus Trip Weekend (or Let’s Go Tripping).
The Olympus Trip is an iconic camera. Olympus made them between 1969 and 1984 and David Bailey advertised them, remember?
We have a stock, ever changing, of refurbished, guaranteed, restyled beauties. They are for sale but you can come and play. Spend a weekend with us, we will lead you and allow you to experiment. We will develop and print the results in the darkroom. You can take your Trip back to your accommodation on the Saturday evening. You’ll probably want to keep it as well, but even if you don’t, you’ll have a portfolio of pictures to take home from your “Trip”.
£150 plus materials
29th and 30th June
Advanced Fine Printing.
This workshop assumes you’ve done a bit of printing already, maybe you did the Beginner’s Darkroom and/or The darkroom refresher with us, or you’ve been printing for years. This will show you how we make prints that are finely crafted to Exhibition quality. We will explore the mystical, yet revolutionary world of “Split Grade Printing” and experiment with some different papers, developers and toners. We’ll even make our own contrast control developer. Then we’ll look at drying, spotting and mounting our work ready for the gallery wall. You won’t take away a bursting portfolio because fine printing just doesn’t work that way, we will be looking for you to achieve one truly amazing print on some really nice paper.
£150 plus materials
12th and 13th July
Beautiful Old Cameras (we can play with our collection and make pictures).
Fun and pure, unadulterated nostalgia. We are going to play with our collection of beautiful old cameras, from Box Brownies to Folders. We are going to make pictures like they used to. We will load them with the appropriate sized black and white film, make pictures, process and print them. If they let light in to the wrong places, that’s all part of the fun and the look of the image. Some of the cameras are simple, others require some careful consideration, but the look from each will be unique. It could be the start of a very special adventure.
£150 plus materials
20th and 21st July
Basic Black and White Film Photography.
This is for those who are either completely new to photography or those whose experience has all been with pixels. We have cameras but you can bring your own manual 35mm SLR if you have one. We are going to take it right back to basics, look at how cameras do what they do, how film behaves and we will carry out our own “alchemical” experiments. If you are a digital photographer, this is what it is all about… The penny will drop.
It’s certainly not theoretical though we are going to see it happening and make our own successes and failures.
£150 plus materials.
27th and 28th July
Pinhole Cameras (making and working with).
You can make a pinhole camera from just about any light tight container and we will use a few, from tiny film tubs to plastic dustbins. We will expose various light sensitive materials in all sorts of size. We will also use Ilford’s revolutionary Pinhole camera, it exposes 5x4 sheets that we can enlarge in the darkroom. At the end of this workshop not only will you take home your homemade cameras and the results of your efforts but everyone will take away an Ilford camera kit.
£219 (including price of camera) plus materials.
10th and 11th August
Old Processes (Cyanotype, Salt Printing etc.)
In the early days of photography several materials and processes were tried and tested before the silver nitrate process was made commercially available. We will experiment with some of these early processes. Everyone will have the opportunity to make some negatives using the Ilford pinhole cameras and then try out various processes to print them. Everyone can take home an alternative processing kit of his or her choice.
£250 inclusive of materials and 1 processing kit to take home.
This workshop dovetails quite nicely with the pinhole workshop, if you would like to come to both we will deduct 10% from the total.
After a short rest…
28th and 29th September
Large Format Landscape
If you have a large format camera bring it with you but we hope to have a 5x4 camera for everyone by then. It’s Large Format Landscape, we’re in Grizedale Forest so it’s not going to be architecture is it? We might try some smaller found still life studies as well but there is a strong tradition for big negatives and landscape. It’s about quality, biting sharpness and fine resolution, a well made print from a large format negative is hard to beat. The 5x4 cameras we will use are all about control, the film and lens planes are independently manoeuvrable so that we can determine not just the shape but the sharpness and depth of field in our photograph. Obviously we’ll process and print everything we make.
£150 plus materials.
So that’s the first round. If everything goes to plan they will be repeated. From September there will also be 2 evening classes of 6 x 2 hour sessions, I will announce those in a couple of weeks. I can organise a workshop for your group. There is a maximum of 5 delegates for each workshop. I am also happy to talk about 1 to 1 or 1 to 2 tuition. Please get in touch if there is something you would like to talk about.
To book your place, there are only 5 places for each workshop, send an E mail totalk@steventaylorphotography.co.uk or telephone 01229 860588 between 10am and 4pm. Please tell us your name, address, telephone and E mail address and which workshops you would like to attend. If there are places available we will need a deposit of £50 to secure your place. The balance of the workshop fee will be due one week before the workshop date.’
Steven has been a professional photographer for 37 years and throughout maintained a fine art practice using black and white film and darkroom processes. He has an MA in fine art photography and has taught fine art, documentary and darkroom photography at all levels up to degree and professional level. He is a knowledgeable teacher and imparts an infectious enthusiasm for the craft.
Email: talk@steventaylorphotography.co.uk
Twitter: @taylorphoto
01229 860588
