Chapter 1 is here.

The Applied Digital Photography short course kicked off on Thursday evening. Stephen Bean has a awesome pedigree: seven of his family are film makers; he’s been a battlefield photographer and I forget the rest…  He reminded me of Don McCullin….. whose work I admire.

 

A one hour lecture, with questions allowed.  A one hour session in the lab. Three assignments during the ten weeks.  We can use the lab anytime, and it’s open up to about 11pm.  Three quarters of the participants are women.

Stephen spoke of what it’s like to take photos without looking through the lens and with the display panel turned off.  He said we would learn how liberating this can be.  He also said we’d become worse photographers before we got better. When he said this, I remembered the model the learning runs from "unconscious incompetence" through "conscious incompetence", into "conscious competence" on to "unconscious competence"…   I felt I was in the company of someone who understands learning: he’s not simply a lecturer.

So I couldn’t wait to start taking photographs without seeing what the camera could see.  I was itching to go.  "Just do it" omani began and this is what happened….

 and

 

even worse…

 

and …

This is the best one I got …

 

But, I’ve had so much fun.

What have I learned so far?

I’ve learnt that my first instinct is to tilt the camera at too sharp an angle.  I’m growing in confidence that I’ll soon be able to shoot what I want to aim at.  I remember when the light meter packed up in my OM1, I learned to change aperture and speed without a light meter.  I learned a lot about what light looked like, even though I have a long way to go yet…

I’ve also learned about a method which will surely help me take edgy photographs.

 

PS:  Photoshop - that’s what we’ll learn in the lab and I’ll have more to say about that after next week’s lesson.  Meanwhile, if you have any advice for me, I’m sucking it all up these days.