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Ref Peter Coulson ‘workshop’ 25th July 2025. He is a good photographer and an intelligent person.

I’ve thought long and hard about writing and posting this following our workshop in Birmingham, organised by myself. I realise that most of you don’t know who I am or what I’ve achieved, so here’s a link to my short biography, written by my ex-manager/rep Mark Davis who owned ObsessionArt of London. I’ve been around, I’m no mug, I retired from professional photography 18 years ago but carried on doing workshops for fun. You can still find my images for sale even now.

I saw my duty to be ensuring that everyone learned and had a good day, making everything run smoothly with no hiccups. I had been aquainted/ friends? with Peter Coulson for a few years and finally managed to arrange this workshop. We had spoken by many video call, phone call and emails over the years and I was looking forward to meeting him in person, anxious that he liked and respected me as I liked and respected him. Unfortunately this wasn’t to be, the attitude that I was met with was one of arrogance, superiority and confrontation.

When, right at the start of the day he asked what I wanted him to do, I asked for his lighting demonstration, model training and help and advice with our own photography.

There were many points during the day that I would normally have challenged, but kept quiet to save the atmosphere and experience for everyone that I owed a successful day that didn’t come cheap. I’ll quote a few instances that applied to myself as I don’t feel qualified to speak for other people.

When he was talking about highlight warning settings, I volunteered the settings for my Sony (which were the same as he was recommending just relevant to the Sony menu) to which he replied ‘I hate youtubers! -WHY? What did I say to earn that response, especially from someone that spends so much time on his own youtube channel? Was the inference that everyone else is wrong and he’s the only one that’s right?

Next I was derided for mentioning the Godox X Nano trigger (£45.00 when I bought it) when he was talking about his Profoto do-it-all trigger (£375.00 in the UK) that did less than the X Nano. He told me it was just manufacturers selling me more crap, without him looking at it or letting me tell him about it – does that make me a mug then? I’ve had both triggers – I’ll keep the X Nano.

Then I was accused of ‘piggybacking’ when I stepped up to have my second turn photographing our model and he changed the plan by suggesting a change of clothes for her instead. What is ‘piggybacking’ anyway?

I’ve decided not to quote any more instances, these were in just the first hour.

I’ve apologised to our model for booking her for this workshop, I honestly thought she would benefit from his ‘wisdom’. His attitude towards her was dismissive, probably because she wasn’t experienced enough to give him pictures that he didn’t have to work for – but that was the point anyway. He made her feel, and look, uncomfortable, and some of the things he said were a little questionable (this was confirmed by other attendees too) It appeared that he felt that him showing us his ‘model training’ skills (all 10 minutes of it) should have made us all giddy with admiration. When it came to photographing her I stepped up first to give her a familiar face and technique to work with, having worked with her quite a few times. She relaxed quickly and settled into the model I knew, for which Peter Coulson later claimed that it took him just 5 minutes to get her out of the habits we’d forced upon her and to perform well. Any half decent photographer can produce good results with good model, so when your lucky enough to work with established, very good models, you can expect your portfolio to reflect this. Faced with less experienced models it can be a different story and some people struggle.

We were told that saying ‘hold that’ when working with models is bad, then we were told that he said exactly that to a model when she was on her phone during her own time.

We spent 2 hours examining his photographs, during which time we were ridiculed for not knowing some top photographers that he admired, we all have our own favourite photographers and I don’t expect, or ridicule people for not admiring the same ones as me. Emphasis was placed on getting it right in camera, then we were told he spent 17 hours re-touching one image. Then the inference that if you didn’t use ‘manual’ you were not so smart. A lot of mixed messages.

I’ll finish with a summary and a video clip. I came away disappointed, feeling I’d been treated like a not-very-savvy novice, no respect shown, he had obviousley not researched anyone’s background and seemed to take pleasure in humiliating myself and others. In his Peter and Bec podcast she references him making a woman cry, to which he smiles and says it’s not the first time.

In the following video clip, he didn’t have the decency to call me by name, he refers to us as a good group to teach, been through the camera clubs and had our souls taken away – really? Do you posses the soul that we desire then? I don’t think so.

I decided to be quiet and guarded for the rest of the day to avoid being made a fool of any further. I did learn something though – not to attempt to humiliate, deride or embarass my attendees, not to insist that my way is in the Ten Commandments and you are of lesser intelligence if you do it any other way, I could go on.