Photography Course

After many years of telling myself that I would one day take a photography class, that day finally arrived.  Actually, it was two days. I have just completed a two-day photography class with the Donnette, head of photography at the Edna Manley School of Art and a professional photographer, Marvin, who is one of her former students. The course was sponsored by www.socialcalendarja.com 

I now know the difference between freezing, blurring, and panning; what all the controls and settings on the camera mean and how to use them. I also know fancy words and expressions like depth of field, white balance, bracketing, leading line, and rule of thirds.

I have learned a lot and have a lot to learn. Though am feeling much more comfortable using all the manual controls, which I did today - think my pictures are better. We also learned a lot about composition, taking a walk into Papine and working in the garden at UTECH.

As Marvin says, 'practice, practice, practice . . . " So I will.

Here are a few photos from the weekend. None of them are photoshopped; these are how they came from the camera . . . 

Think I have 'freezing' figured out.  This young athlete spent a long time in the hot sun jumping, twisting and running. 

Not an artistic shot, but rather fun to see everyone lined up taking pictures. We were practicing 'panning' as the athlete ran back and forth.  I am better at 'blurring'.

Statue in the garden at the UTECH Art Centre

Would be difficult not to take a good picture of this sweetheart :-)

I love this one, taken in the Papine marketplace. I had taken a carefully posed picture of the dad and his baby, when older brother popped into the frame with this wonderful grin. I took it very quickly and hoped for the best. 

I was practicing 'freeezing', using a 1/500 shutter speed and focussing  on the flag which was flying furiously in the wind.  The bike's young owner was quite fascinated that the flag was my interest and kept offering to hold it still for me. 

Still life session: shells in a jar

More still life

I thought I would not be so interested in the portrait session, but found that I quite liked it. They hired a model to work with indoors and out, practicing different angles and lighting techniques.  I enjoyed experimenting with the monochrome setting.

Learned different settings and diffusing light while taking portraits in the midday sun.