Buxton Peak District Photography Workshop (July 20th 2025)

Description

Join me on the 20th July for a packed day of photographing the areas surrounding Buxton in the Peak District.

Buxton is a large and wonderful town that actually has the Peak District’s borders run around it. It is also the highest market town in England. With its fantastic location amongst some of the best the Peak District has to offer, you are well rewarded with great access to both limestone and gritstone. I regularly run workshops in this area as it offers a great selection of locations with a lot of variety and some great spots to practice various technical and compositional elements. I have a regular route that works really well.

Buxton sits on the cusp between the White Peak limestone and the South-West Peak’s gritstone.

We may start by visiting one of Buxton’s most infamous landmarks, Solomon’s Temple on Grin Low. This Victorian hill marker stands high above the town and offers great views across Buxton. It’s an easy-to-get-to location with a good path, even if a little steep, and it will warm us up for the rest of the day.

We will then move to Three Shires head to practice our waterfall skills. This little waterfall runs under a characterful pack-horse bridge on the borders of Cheshire, Staffordshire and Derbyshire, hence the name. In olden times, it would be used by outlaws to cross boundaries and escape the jurisdiction of the police. Nowadays, it is a much more peaceful spot. Here we get to spend a good amount of time working slowly and practising the use of ND filters.

We will then likely head to Hitter Hill which is a fantastic and very easy to access location which offers one of the best views in the Peak District, over my two favourite hills, Chrome and Parkhouse Hill.

We will then figure out our sunset location. We may travel out to The Roaches which will work really well at this time of the year. We could either go up on the escarpment or to Roach End Barn, or both if we have time!

We will meet at Poole’s Cavern car park at 13:30 for a meet and greet with myself and the other photographers before making our way up to Solomon’s Temple.

We will break for lunch around 17:00 and, if time allows, look at some of my images on a laptop to discuss basic processing techniques within Adobe Lightroom. The day will conclude after sunset around 21:30 allowing time to walk down.

Throughout the day we will look at techniques such as focusing, use of tripod, use of filters vs exposure blending, composition, working with the light and more.

Upon booking, you will be sent an order confirmation email which includes meeting details, kit-list, discount codes and a questionnaire for you to fill out. This questionnaire just allows me to get information about you, so I can plan the day appropriately for the whole group.

I am more than happy to discuss other more advanced techniques on 1-2-1 basis as well as to the group, depending on what is beneficial.

The day is tailored around you as much as possible, and I strive to give each of you on the course for that day the best day possible. At the end of the day, you will have hopefully learnt new techniques and taken away some imagery you will be proud of. I am a friendly and relaxed tutor, and I welcome you to keep in touch with me after the course to ask me any questions you may have looked over on the day.

There will be a maximum group size of 4 meaning there will be plenty of 1-2-1 time. I will be on hand throughout the day for any questions, and my focus will be on ensuring you have the best day possible.

What if the weather is poor? Don’t worry, unless it’s torrential all day, I have plenty of locations that suit a variety of weather and with my experience, you will still get to the best locations possible and you will still get some great images, for example waterfalls are brilliant for those overcast days. As we are in the UK, we see more grey than we do yellow and I am well adapted to getting us to the best spots if we need to change itinerary. This may even include chasing the light, with my knowledge of how the weather works in certain areas and using forecasts, webcams and other tools on the day to help us make those decisions, which I will share with you. We will spend a lot of time working on technique and composition and most of the day is designed to work up until that hopeful sunset so you have the skills to get the best you can at the end of the day. So even if we don’t get the weather or even that sunset you will have learnt a load of new skills, even if you are a more advanced photographer which you can take away with you and use on your next photographic outing.

There is a £40 deposit required to secure your place on this workshop with the balance due no later than 6 weeks before the workshop.