Here’s a confession for you.

Never ask me anything about the physics of photography. You’ll get a blank look. And do not, whatever you do, tap me up for information about Schleimpflug. It’s to do with bendy lenses and allows you to get things in focus when they are in different time zones, or something.

From a technical point of view, I know just about enough to do what I want to do. I photograph with my instincts rather than my head – often by the seat of my pants.

My good friend Peter Cox on the other hand knows his stuff. Apart from being one of Ireland’s finest landscape photographers, he is also one of the country’s best photographic educators.

Last weekend I sat in on one of his workshops for a couple of hours. I was impressed.

Within ten minutes, I’d learned a bunch of stuff that I didn’t know. For instance, each lens has a focus point beyond which everything is in focus. That bit I knew. What I didn’t know that it is very easy to work out what that distance is. It’s simply the focal length in feet. For instance, for a 50mm lens the distance beyond which everything is in focus is 50ft. So if you focus on something 50ft away, everything behind it will be equally in focus. For a 24mm lens this distance is 24ft. For a 10mm lens, it’s the end of my nose – but then I have a big nose.

There was loads more where this came from.

Peter mixes classroom sessions with outdoor practicals during his two-day workshops. I was also able to see what he’s like in the field with students. I am legendarily impatient. “Because I say so,” is pretty much the level of my tutoring ability. Peter is a gentleman. Patient and engaging, easily repeating tuition to students as they quiz him while composing photographs. He is warm and laughs heartily.

Here’s a typical interaction:

Peter Cox with a student during one of his two-day workshops. (c) Roger Overall 2010

Shouldn’t all teachers be like that?

If you want to learn about photography, and landscape photography in particular, you couldn’t do much better than spend some time in Peter’s company. Check out his current workshops here: Peter’s Workshops.