Robert Rommel Nature Photography Workshops focus on making you a better photographer and giving you a chance to photograph some of nature’s marvels. While placing you in fantastic photographic opportunities, we make sure to improve your photography in ways that will last after you leave the workshop. When you leave a Robert Rommel Nature Photography Workshop, you will have grown as a photographer – increasing your understanding of photography, gaining new skills, and learning more about our wonderful wildlife in addition to photographing some of nature’s most interesting animals and locations.
All our workshops combine exciting photography sessions with classroom-type instruction. We offer two kinds of photography workshops to fit your needs.
What makes our Nature Photography Workshops different?
Education and Teaching Background
Robert Rommel received his Bachelor’s degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Princeton University and attended the University of Michigan for graduate education in Ecology. Education about nature has been a part of his life since early childhood and to this day, he still spends time studying the wildlife and ecosystems he photographs. A comprehensive knowledge of biology is an invaluable tool in understanding your subjects, determining their locations and habits, and predicting behavior. One of the central goals of our Nature Photography Workshops is to impart this knowledge to workshop participants.
Teaching skills are just as important as knowledge for creating a successful workshop. Robert Rommel has taught at various levels, including community groups, children, undergraduate and graduate-level classes. In our workshops, we make sure you understand the concepts, not just follow our example. A full understanding will allow you to expand upon the techniques we teach and adapt them to your own photography.
Intimate Knowledge of Nature
Nature is filled with an amazing abundance of diversity. South Carolina’s lowcountry has many different ecosystems including sandy beaches, saltmarshes, fresh-water ponds and rivers, hardwood forests, pine forests and cypress swamps. Each environment is populated by a unique set of species. Robert Rommel spends time photographing the landscapes and species of all of these habitats. While most of the time is spent with the diverse birds, mammals, and landscapes of the region, he also photographs reptiles, amphibians, butterflies and other insects, and plants. Photographing a creature or location depends on many factors like timing, season, light, weather, tides, and wind. Our workshops use a combination of all these factors to place you in the best situations possible for nature photography.
Additional Benefits
Our Nature Photography Workshops offer much more than just the workshop itself. Participants in all our workshops receive customized handouts that pertain to the techniques and subjects that the workshop focuses on. Your workshop is important to us. We spent countless hours in the field scouting out prime locations and keeping track of how conditions change throughout the year. We also communicate extensively with you to make sure that we cover your individual goals during the workshop. For group workshops, we do our best to balance the desires of all participants. Lastly, the workshop does not end with the the last shoot. We are there to give you advice, answer questions, and even provide an extra image review after the workshop ends.
Two types of nature photography workshops
Theme Workshops
Our Theme Workshops are limited to small groups. You will see more wildlife with a small group and receive more personalized instruction. The locations are carefully chosen from places which Robert Rommel is intimately familiar and which offer unique nature opportunities. A typical day will include photographing in the morning, a classroom component during the middle of the day and a photographing component in the late afternoon. The classroom and shooting components will be centered around a cohesive theme – for instance the photographing and classes one day might revolve around photographing birds in flight. Plead read details on the Theme Workshops we are offering to take part in these amazing opportunities.
One-on-One Workshops
One-on-One Workshops are private opportunities specifically geared towards improving your nature photography in the beautiful and diverse settings of the American southeast. You can choose to work on any facet of photography that you would like or you can choose to have Robert Rommel suggest areas of improvement based on a review of your work and comments you might have. Instruction, location, and subjects will selected that are appropriate to your personalized goals as well as current conditions. Please read further details on One-on-One Workshops if you are interested in this unique experience.