The 2009 photography workshops conducted by Greg Perry and myself proved to be so popular that we're back in 2010 with a new programme.

Due to my commitments to FotoFreo 2010, only three workshops will be conducted in the first half of the year.

These workshops have something for photographers of every level - from beginners, to intermediate and advanced enthusiasts.

So what's in store in Workshops in a SNAP! 2010 ?

• Maximising your DSLR: This workshop is aimed at beginning photographers who have just started using a Digital SLR (DSLR) and who would like to learn more about their camera, its features and functions. f you've been taking photographs with your DSLR on the Automatic setting, and want to gain greater control over your camera and the photographs you create, then this workshop is for you. This workshop includes a guided photo walk through Fremantle, where Greg Perry will show you how to take better pictures in situ. (February 28, full day workshop)

• Practical Portraiture: This is a comprehensive, hands-on workshop that will equip you with the skills, knowledge and confidence to photograph portraits both indoors and outdoors. This workshop is designed to develop your ability to work with your portrait subjects and to use both natural and flash lighting to create beautiful portraits. (May 2, full day workshop)

• Sensational Strobing: Confused about using your speedlight (external flash)? Would you like to gain a better understanding of how speedlight and studio strobes can give your images greater impact and "oomph"? Sensational Strobing is aimed at photographers interested in flash lighting - often called strobing - in their photography. The strobing phenomenon has taken the photographic world by storm: the best strobists create images of great impact and drama. (23 May, full day workshop)

For more information and to book your workshops, visit Workshops in a SNAP!

I'll be exhibiting in the FotoFreo 2010 Fringe Festival with my own solo exhibition - Sons of Ganga.

Sons of Ganga is the story of the Ganges River at the holy city of Varanasi. The water of the Ganges is polluted and rife with effluent and refuse from the city. Research data indicates that there are 1.5 million faecal coliform bacteria per 100ml of water -- the amount for safe bathing should be less than 500.

Yet, Ganges water is mysteriously rich in dissolved oxygen -- a remarkable phenomenon given its pollution. Hindus imbue it with remarkable powers: to bathe in the Ganges is to attain moksha, the escape from the cycle of rebirth.

The faithful descend the ghats of Varanasi in the morning and twilight to immerse themselves in the brown water. Ashes of the dead from the cremation ghats are scattered into the Ganges; those who cannot afford the costly crematon or whose deaths forbid cremation are released into her waters whole.

Sons of Ganga will take you to the ghats of Varanasi and into the akharas on its banks.

The exhibition will be at the Cracked Gallery, in the fantastic Behind the Monkey, 479 Beaufort Street, Highgate. The exhibition runs from March 13 to 31. Behind the Monkey is open every day.

Let's get one thing straight: surf boat rowing is a mean, physical feat.

Watch a crew take a surf boat into the ocean and you'll soon realise that you're looking at four oarsmen and one sweep working like clockwork: bodies, joints and muscles working in syncopation to drive the vessel out into the waves and beyond, around the cans and then back to the beach as fast as physically possible.

As a spectator, you can only respect the raw physicality of what these men and women undergo in their passion for the sport.

As a photographer for the Western Australian Surf Boat Panel, I've been covering the Navy Boat Carnivals this season. I like getting close to the action. Bugger the risk of having camera and lenses doused with seawater and salt spray. I enter the water, widerning the field of view of my lens. I shoot low and tight, bringing the camera eye level with the boat or with the rowers, taking the viewer into the crew's "playing field".

Surf rowing is replete with moments of drama and tension: the crew fighting to hold the boat fast against the surge of waves at "guns up", their bodies tight in anticipation of the crack of the starter pistol; the moments of sheer exhaustion and elation as they cross the line and spill out of their vessel.

It's photographic mana!

Plans are afoot to publish the surf rowing photographs in a sequel to my last book Sons of Beaches (yes, there's a bit of a "Sons of..." theme going on with my exhibitions). It's tentatively entitled: Sons of Beaches: Oarsmen of the Apocalypse. :-)

Stay tuned.

Metaphor is an online blog by WA photographers Bohdan Warchomij and Darren Smith, which casts its eyes on what's current in WA and the world throught he medium of photography. Warchomij is the creator of Portrait of a Revolution, a photographic essay of the Orange Revolution of Ukraine. Smith will be exhibiting his documentation of the gypsies of southern France in the FotoFreo Fringe Festival exhibition, Le Campment.

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Photojojo - When a site says: "Own a digital camera? Take a bajillion photos with it? Maybe even printed a few? You're in the right place," you know that you're in non-serious photography territory. Like it or hate it Photojojo brings fun back into photography. Snap away without guilt with the twice-weekly newsletter from Photojojo!

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Pommefritz: Italian duo, Max Boschini and Mauro Manuini, create images that are alien, disquieting and graceful. Explore their projects on their website and have your visual senses titilated and challenged.

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Sookie Stackhouse: Before Alan Ball turned brooding vampires and southern belles into a top-rating television series, blonde and busty barmaid (excuse the alliteration) Sookie Stackhouse featured in a range of light-hearted yet humorously raunchy novels by Arkansas-based writer Charlaine Harris. The Sookie Stackhouse series of novels are page-turners and pot-boilers with heroine, Sookie, falling in and out of love with a range of supernatural types. And, yes, this has absolutely nothing to do with photography.

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Love Freo: My studio's in Freo, so I obviously Love Freo. But the Love Freo blog lovingly reveals sides of Freo off the beaten track. Come taste the multitude of flavours and see the kaleidoscope of colours of Freo.