FotoWeekend 2011 will take place from November 16 – 19, at the Conference Centre, Dubai Knowledge Village.  FotoWeekend is a four-day event featuring a host of photography workshops and seminars from five international photographers.

This year we welcome back GPP favourites Bobbi Lane, David Nightingale and Martin Prihoda. And joining the line up for the first time, speed lighting master, Syl Arena and food photography guru, Lou Manna. The full event schedule is online now – many workshops are already close to full capacity, so we recommend that you book soon!

With 18 different workshops and seminars on offer, deciding which one to join can be difficult. Here’s our guide to help you choose the best workshops for you.

The next step for confident beginners
If you have a good understanding of exposure and have a solid grasp of how to shoot in Aperture/Shutter Priority modes (you might have learned this at our Level 1/Level 2 workshops), your next step is to start specialising in different fields of photography. If places and landscapes appeal to you, we recommend David Nightingale’s Landscape Photography and Shoot the City – Day & Night workshops. If you’d love to learn to take better photos of your friends and family, but don’t want to invest in expensive lighting equipment, Bobbi Lane’s Portraits Unplugged workshop will show you how to harness ambient/available light to make captivating portraits. If you’re a bit of a foodie and want to know the recipe to make delicious food photos, check out Lou Manna’s Photography For Foodies & Food Bloggers Seminar.

Get started in lighting
Consider these workshops if you’re comfortable with shutter speed, aperture, ISO and white balance, and you’re looking to add a little extra zing to your photos. Maybe you aspire to have your own studio one day? It’s time to start experimenting with lighting.

When it comes to lighting, you have a choice of routes, and FotoWeekend has introductory workshops for both. Speedlights/speedlights or small flashes, are an affordable, flexible and extremely portable lighting solution, and a great starting point if you want to light your photos. Speedlighting expert, Syl Arena’s Getting Started With Speedlights workshop will take you through setting your flash step-by-step. You will learn how to use flash on and off camera, how to make settings and best use of the different modes, and about the artistic effects of different light modifiers.

If you want to start a little bigger, you can try your hand at studio lighting with Bobbi Lane’s Introduction to Studio Lighting for Portraits. During the workshop, Bobbi will teach you about the lighting tools and techniques that set the mood, form, and texture of your subject.

If you’re hoping to crack the lucrative product or food photography market, consider Bobbi Lane’s Product Photography workshop, or Lou Manna’s Dish It Up! seminar and workshop, where you’ll learn lighting and styling techniques for even the most challenging of dishes as subject matter, to ensure you have to knowhow to will make mouthwatering food photographs.

Taking the next steps
For advanced amateur photographers, the best way to break away from the herd and make your photos really stand out is to try new things. Syl Arena’s workshops are a great way to do just that. In his Multi-Flash Speedliting workshop, Syl will show you how flash photography really comes alive when you get creative using two or more Speedlights together. If you decide to go Flashing in Broad Daylight with Syl, you will learn how to execute sophisticated outdoors shoots with multiple flashes.

…what about advanced shooters?
If lighting, fashion and commercial photography is your thing, consider Martin Prihoda’s workshops. Known for his advanced lighting techniques, Martin’s Big Lights Far Away workshop was the first class to sell out last year – so this year we’ve invited him back to do two sessions! The purpose of the workshop is to help students take their lighting skills from a advanced amateur level, to a professional one, and the calibre of photos produced by last year’s students was nothing short of breathtaking.

NEWLY ADDED! Bobbi Lane and David Nightingale will be offering one-to-one portfolio review sessions on November 14 – click here to find out more.