Warwickshire

121 and Group Photography Workshops

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121 and Group Photography Workshops for 2023

Learn more about photography for beginners and intermediate practitioners.

Come and join me and a group of likeminded people to learn more about photography.

I’ve got three group workshops currently available and spaces for 121 coaching.

On my workshops, I’ll get you using manual mode and will hand over complete creative control to you, teaching you how to set up your camera and use it in a simplified way that places the image as the challenge.
I’ll even teach you the basics of composition, exposure and post production.

Street Photography

Urban Landscape Photography

Rural Landscape Photography

I can teach you street photography and Landscapes - Urban and Rural with a documentary led style that is perfect for travel and hobbyist photography.

Check out the below workshops for more information and for booking.

Spaces are always limited to four per course.

These are the available 3 courses for now.

For more workshops, please subscribe to my emails for news of new courses as they’re released.

Group Photography Workshops

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Group photography workshop and short courses available in Leicestershire for beginners and intermediate levels.

Low Light Night Photography and Long Exposure Group Workshop

I’ve been working professionally as a photographer in many different areas for 10 years this year and have shot as a hobbyist for many more years. You’ll discover a burning passion for photography within me that runs so deep as if I was put on this earth for this purpose. My ethos has always been to be playful with my photography and this amazing skill I can pass on to any student that joins me on one of my workshops.

The Wharf, Hinckley - Night Time Long Exposure Group Photography Workshop

I’ve already ran four group photography workshops this year and have 4 courses available to book in the near future. My workshops are brilliant fun and ideal for photography enthusiasts / hobbyists who want to learn how to be more playful with their photography as well as learn more of the how to do’s.

I always teach people how to simplify setting up their camera and using it with zero complications but at the same giving the knowledge to my clients to be able to understand their cameras better and handing over complete creative control to them by simply explaining an easy way to make photographs in manual mode.
I’ve developed a technique to explain manual mode use that makes life so much easier for my clients.

Then I teach them how to measure the light, use the light with designing strong compositions through form, shape, framing and how to see a photograph that’s worth making.

With my workshops, my clients can take away the knowledge and manage the process on their own outside of my courses. Although many come back to get more information and do more workshops with me. I have loads of repeat customers.

Here’s a couple of reviews from clients that have done workshops with me:

“I spent a great night out learning how to take incredible night-shoot photography. It has re-inspired me to pick up my camera and start having fun again. Loads of insight & experiences shared across the group, well worth attending for all levels.”
— Matthew Lock
“Went on one of Paul’s. Workshops.. Had an excellent time and managed to learn a lot about my camera...will definitely going on more workshops with him .. explained everything in a easy to learn terms ... come away with a bit more artistic eye for a picture...I would highly recommend one of his workshops...its also a way of meeting like minded people .... great bloke and a good instructor....”
— Shaun Poxon

Below is a list of workshops that are currently available in the near future to book on to:

If you need any help or would like to chat to me about any of these workshops, then please hit this button and fill in my contact form. I’ll get back to asap.

Sam And Dan Get Lost - Comedy Film - Behind the Scenes

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Comedy Feature Film - Behind The Scenes

Sam and Dan Get Lost (played by Robert Lane and Richard Baldwin), formerly Blokes, is nearing the completion of filming the penultimate scenes.

Director - Lee Price

Asst. Director - Cameron Savage

Asst. Director / Lighting / Locations / Media - Paul Hands

Sound - Stuart Tizick

Plus supporting crew.

This blog is about keeping people up to date with our progress during the recording of our comedy feature film. Filming has stopped.

Kind of….

Filming has only really been postponed because of British summer time, the light isn’t fading until 10:30pm and everyone involved is making this film around their current work commitments. Some of our shoots can often go on in to the small hours and it’s difficult to maintain when you have to be up to go to a job in the morning.

We’re aiming at restarting filming again in the Autumn, after the nights begin to draw in again. The whole film is set at night time, one night in the lives of these two guys that have both suffered at the hands of the women in their lives. They collide in an unexpected way and form a comedic friendship whilst on their adventures (getting lost).

The unlikely duo played by Robert and Richard both come from a creative background, belong to an improvisational comedy group called the Improlectuals and have featured at the Leicester Comedy Festival.

Have a look through this set of behind the scenes stills and look out for my next blog.

Don’t forget to keep up to date with our filmmaking, you can subscribe to my blog for news by email.

Feeling the need to check out my photography?

Click here to view my projects.

Sam And Dan Get Lost - Comedy Feature Film

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Sam And Dan Get Lost

A comedy feature film, 95% made in Hinckley, Leicestershire and 5% Nuneaton, Warwickshire!

Formerly Blokes. Film Director Lee Price has changed the title of the film that our small and creative team have been working on since the start of 2019.

Sam and Dan played by improv comedy actors Robert Lane and Richard Baldwin

As a creative team, we’ve almost completed the recording of our new feature film that has been filmed purely around Hinckley and some small parts in Nuneaton, in the middle of England in Leicestershire and Warwickshire.

Director Lee Price gives us information in good faith that we’re about 10% away from completion and then everything that has been recorded has to be put together in post production before we can look at distribution and the possibility of putting a big show on locally for anyone interested in seeing our hard work come together.

I must add that I’ve seen a lot of the footage and it’s really quite funny, I can’t wait to watch the completed version.

Here’s the latest behind the scenes photographs.

You can subscribe to my blog and get these sent directly to your email address.

I don’t write blogs too often, so you won’t be bombarded but I do have some great news coming up soon regarding a 12 month project that I’ve been working on around the English Countryside. I personally think it’s quite exciting because I’ve never worked on a project for this length of time before. So sign up and I’ll let you know when they’re ready to view.

Sublunary - Alien Invasion of Planet Earth

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Fine Art Photography meets Visual Stories

Sublunary - Part 2

As a professional photographer, Father to the most beautiful little toddler in the world and Husband to an equally beautiful Mother; I find it difficult to get out and make personal work.

In 2017, I graduated from University with a High 2:1 in a BA Hons in Photography & Video degree at De Montfort University, where the idea for this project was born.  I began with a long period of time in the library, scouring art books and photographic archives, learning about who, what where, when, why and how specific bodies of work was made.

Surprisingly, I came across some painters and other Fine Art Photographers that worked in similar fields to my research.  One in particular that sticks out in my mind was Photographer Erasmus Schroeter and Painter Max Ernst.

Erasmus Schroeter (2005).

Max Ernst, (N.D.)

I was also heavily inspired by my lecturer (Kosovan) Lala Meredith-Vula who is a contemporary fine art photographer with international recognition.  Lala's ideas about my work and how to get the best out of me was first class and Lala's self confessed crazy mind was a perfect match for the project I had stuck in my head.  She knew just how to get me excited about my own work.

Lala Meredith-Vula

Lala Meredith-Vula

Lala Meredith-Vula (N.D.)

Lala Meredith-Vula (N.D.)

So the body of work for Sublunary began.  I created a series of landscape photographs that followed the narrative of an imaginary alien invasion of the planet Earth.  A tall order you might think?  I just needed the right level of inspiration and a camera.  At the end of creating the work for my degree, I put it all together in a short movie with a spooky sound track that I created myself.  You can watch that below.

I'm now about to embark on a much longer journey that will see me creating a whole new body of work for Sublunary Part 2.  I'll be using my experiences from the first part of the project and will be digging deeper in to my imagination.

Here's a sneaky peek at my first experiment for part 2...

Paul Hands (2018), The Mute.

This is called 'The Mute' and features a landscape photograph that has been manipulated in camera by myself.  I added the red light using the brake lights on my car and chose this location for the crazy tree that could be morphed in to any kind of other worldly creature.  The reverse side of the road sign represents having nothing to say, to be muted and to be stunned by the experience of an alien invasion.  You will see that I've also added a strange shaped metal frame on the right.  This represents an alien being and is the shape of a large humanoid or key hole.  It is hollow and appears invisible with the exception of the outer edges.

The scene is lit like a stage as if the play is being carried out and has undertones of humour, not to be taken seriously.  It's a project that I can literally play and have fun with.  I have a list of locations, that I've been building, so you can watch to see how this develops.

De Montfort University bought the first 5 prints of this project and hold them in their permanent art collection on campus.  You can also read more about this project here.

If you'd like to follow my work then you can subscribe to my emails (below) or follow my social media channels.

Corporate Business Headshots Leicestershire

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Corporate Business Headshots Leicestershire

Recently I've been working with The Stuart Fletcher & Barrett Group at their head office in Nuneaton, Warwickshire.  They hired me to produce 60 corporate business head shots for their new website.  I managed this in 2 days of location shooting on site with a quality mobile photography studio.

The SFB Group are a nationwide accountancy and consultancy.  They wanted a professional image for every single member of staff.  So I took my time and fussed over the details.

We used a grey back drop, a fixed light shooting through an umbrella to soften the harshness of the permanent key light.  Then I set up a Bowens lamp shooting through a Snoot and pointing it on to the back drop behind the heads of each staff member.  This was by design and also to cover up a wrinkly backdrop!

This style produces a brilliant effect that allows the characters to really stand out from the background and gives each person a unique portrait.

Would you like to see some of the results?

Was that a silly question?

You can click on each picture to enlarge them and inspect the quality easier.

The SFB Group were so pleased with the work that I did for them, that they wrote to me with a review and even placed it on Google so it forms part of my SEO.  

“We used the photographic services of Paul Hands for our Corporate Staff Photographs. We required photos for our new website. Paul was recruited as a last minute booking and he could not have been more accommodating. His attention to detail was a comfort as a client and we received great customer service. On the two days of shooting he was very professional and brought out the smile in every member of staff in his own unique way (a lego car and a gingerbread man helped with this too but I won’t let any further details slip and ruin his secrets to getting you smiling). We had the photographs returned to us within a matter of days and Paul had put each set of photo’s into individual files, per staff member, for ease of reference for us. These little bits of attention to detail really make the difference. The quality of the photographs were crisp and clear and were exactly what we were looking for. We would thoroughly recommend Paul’s services to anybody looking for a photographer, he is fantastic!”
— Rosie Iliffe, The Stuart, Fletcher and Barrett Group

To discuss corporate business headshots and portraiture with me, please click on this link to contact me.

UBL 17 Fight Photographs from The Athena

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Welcome to the home of the boxing photographs from UBL 17 at The Athena in Leicester.

This page on my website has been specifically dedicated to the huge collection of photographs, from the unlicensed fighting that goes on between some of the hardest men in Britain.

To view the pictures, simply click on the photograph, then choose the fight collection that you wish to look through.  You will even have the option to buy and have a bespoke book designed for you as well prints and a dvd slideshow with music.  You can do this directly through my website.  Payments are secured and guaranteed through Stripe.

 

Professional Photographer Leicester, Leicestershire, Hinckley, Nuneaton, Coventry, Birmingham, Warwickshire, Midlands, England, UK, United Kingdom, Great Britain.

Commercial, Business, PR, Public Relations, Landscape, Street Photography and Documentary photographer available for commissions.

Simon Workers Motor

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Here's a short promo video that I put together in my spare time to help save Simon's awesome motor from being to sold to an unloving home.

Stratford Upon Avon Street Photography

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My wife Lisa booked herself on to a photography workshop in Stratford Upon Avon and took me along for a stay in the local Youth Hostel overnight, to accompany her.  I wasn't going to sit around in the hostel all day on my tod. So I'd planned a whole day of shooting some street photography to kill some time.

Armed with my new Fuji X-Pro 1, 2 full batteries and a 32GB card; I began by searching for a free parking space, alas... Free Parking and small jaunt in to the town centre.

As any Street Photographer will tell you, it's probably the hardest form of photography known to man and alike a sport for us photographers.  The best way to get in to your stride is to sit and look through some of your favourite websites at some of your favourite photographers to get some inspiration before you set off.

Make sure you've got some good footwear on because you're gonna walk for a long time and quite far.  Have money on you, so you can stop and get refreshments along the route.  I prefer to find small cafes in interesting areas, so I can watch the world go by while I'm eating and drinking for fuel.

The entire evening before, I was somewhat absent minded because I was thinking hard about a theme that I'd like to make some work around in Stratford.  I even spent all morning before arriving; considering what I might find and what style I'd like to shoot in.  I asked myself questions like; What kind of people visit Stratford?  Should I make something around tourists? Should I make a satirical view or be more serious?

I'll be honest, once I was there on the street, everything went out of the window and I just took what I could find.  I did find it very difficult but here are some of the results from my days work.

I also shot some in colour and as you guessed, it became satirical.  I like to play and add some humour in to my work where I can...

Of course these are my favourites from the day and you'll never see the ones that didn't make it!  There's always pictures that stay hidden.

If you liked my work, please leave a comment.  I'm open to critique as well.

A Tough Job with SSAFA (Armed Forces Charity)

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I've left it a week before I wrote this blog because it's taken me this long to come to terms with the assignment I have just completed with SSAFA (Soldiers, Sailors & Airmen's Families Association), who have just become a new client for my professional photography business.

If you haven't heard of SSAFA, you can follow this link to see who their charity helps.  They were formed and designed to help the armed forces, Veterans and their families with a number of issues.

They support the British military at home and abroad and are the oldest and longest running military charity.

The assignment I was given, was to make a photographic reportage documentary about an event where the Parents and families of the fallen military men and women, come together to remember them and to help provide support for each other.

It was a very difficult assignment because it felt like being a photographer at a funeral.  The families were sometimes very emotionally upset and to point a camera at the parents of a fallen soldier didn't come naturally.  I truly felt their woes and shed some tears for them the following day, once what I'd done sank in.

I'm a firm believer in the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words, so no more from me, have a look for yourself...

Click on images to enlarge.

Thanks for reading and looking through this project.  As you may have noticed; it was very emotional for the families and difficult for me to document.

I welcome any new enquiries about working with me on any assignments, so if you'd like to discuss any future photographic projects with me, please follow this link to get in touch.