An invitation from the Royal Photographic Society to hold our volunteer photographer training session at their headquarters was too good an offer to refuse, so on 25th August 2015 a group of us travelled to Bath to set up our second pilot project.

During the sculpture project's delivery phase we plan to set up a volunteering and training programme, a major part of which will be recruiting volunteers from across the UK to photograph monuments and sculpture out in the public realm. The training day in Bath was held to introduce the project to two willing volunteers who had kindly offered to be our guinea pigs.

The programme for the day included introductory talks in the morning, followed by a practical photography session in the field after lunch, then a further practical session back at the RPS to cover image processing. At one point, we thought our outdoor session might be threatened by the weather but we decided not to let a bit of drizzle hold us back and went out anyway. I spent much of this session holding an umbrella over the volunteers, to keep their cameras as dry as possible until the rain stopped.

Our volunteers are R. Keith Evans, FRPS, who is based in Kent, and Nikki Hazelton, from Essex. We are very grateful for their help. Having discussed the project at the meeting they will now spend a few days taking photographs of public sculpture in their own areas. We look forward to seeing the results and hearing back from them on how they have found the process. Their input into the development of the project will be very useful.

Key lessons learnt from the training day: choose the best time of day and year to take your photos (it was very busy in Bath despite the bad weather) and try not to do photography in the rain (unless you have a friend to hold the umbrella!).