Alan Ranger's Ethical Policy: Responsible Education
Teaching photography outdoors makes you a guest in places that don’t belong to you. How you behave in them — and how you treat the people you’ve brought along — matters every bit as much as the pictures anyone takes home. This is how I run things, and why.
People first, always
You can’t learn much in a crowd, so groups are kept to six or fewer — enough that everyone gets real one-to-one time and nobody gets left at the back.
Locations are chosen and planned properly, with backups for weather and a clear plan for safety. Beyond that, it’s simple: everyone is treated fairly and made welcome, whatever their kit or experience. I’d rather you left having enjoyed the day and learned something than ticked off a famous viewpoint.
Carbon-neutral by design
Driving to beautiful places for a living has a cost the landscape never asked for. I’d rather account for it than ignore it — so every year I measure my activity and carbon impact, and offset it through a certified project covering me both personally and professionally.
That’s what the Carbon Neutral Organisation certification means here: not a sticker, but a yearly reckoning with the aim of making every workshop carbon neutral.
Effective from 1st October 2021 View my Carbon Offset Certificate →
Planting with More Trees
Offsetting numbers on a spreadsheet are easy to ignore, so I wanted something you could actually point at. For every place sold on every workshop, a tree is planted — in your name — through my membership with More Trees.
It adds up to a real, growing wood tied directly to the events I run. You can watch it grow in the live count.
See the Virtual Forest Count →
The place comes before the photograph
I teach as a member of Nature First, whose code comes down to one idea I believe in completely: no single image is worth damaging the place that gave it to you.
In practice that means leaving locations as we found them, keeping a respectful distance from wildlife and habitats, and being honest about the fact that a good photograph is never an excuse for bad behaviour outdoors.
Proud to be a member of
