RAOUL SLATER
Raoul has been photographing for 40 years and mastered 35mm, medium and large formats and the wet darkroom before moving on to digital in 2009. His interests are eclectic: ceramics, pre-sapien humans, mathematics, fine art, botany and fungi, the history of photography and comparative anatomy. These interests are filters on his photographic lens.
He will be giving a talk entitled “Left Hand, Right hand, Eyes and Brain”. As he says:
“No one has ever looked at a digital camera purely in the context of the brain behind it, and the image as a product of fine motor control, visual cortex function and neurological processing. I believe that the final frontier in achieving excellence in bird photography is understanding what your brain is doing while there is a camera in hand.
My talk looks at:
- All the functions controlled by the left hand e.g. focus, deep camera functions etc.
- All the functions driven by the right hand: shutter fire, ISO, focus points etc
- What the eye does – framing, reading the algorithm and camera data etc.
- What the brain does – positioning, fieldcraft, aesthetic decisions etc.
When I say “etc.”, I am talking about 120 different variables that the photographer has within their control (and so rarely exploits!), and the integration of all these data points in an instant to produce the most artistic photo possible.
Even the best photographer is mindful of only a dozen variables at a time, and they get stuck in a rut of using the same set up every time. I will suggest projects to break apart these habits and open whole new possibilities of creativity.”
Raoul’s favourite species to photograph: Australian scrub-turkey and bush thick-knee
Raoul’s Areas of Expertise include:
- Monochrome
- Photo competitions
- Composition
- Making mistakes
Raoul’s go-to camera and lens for bird photography:
Canon R5 and 6DII
Canon 16-35, 100mm macro and 300mm f2.8
Image processing software used for bird photography:
Photoshop and Lightroom
Find Raoul on:
- Instagram: @Raoulslater
One of Raoul’s favourites:
