Photographic Workshops
This month’s how to photography tip is more of a where to travel tip. Having just returned from an exciting photographic workshop in the republic of Ecuador, I am juiced about the idea of travel photography workshops. An excellent source of investigative travel and nature workshops is Outdoor Photography Magazine. At the rear of the magazine is a Travel/Workshop section as well as numerous ads for such workshops.
In the June 2009 issue, for instance, there’s information featuring workshops featuring Death Valley, CA, Florence, Italy, Machu Picchu in Peru, the Colorado High Country, India, Antarctica, Yellowstone, Africa and numerous other exciting destinations. (See my Photojournal on this website for details of the 2009 Tao of Photography Workshops and info on contacting the people atPanTerra Gallery for details on Future Workshops.)
One further tip: Don’t get in a hurry. Fully investigate the choices, then decide which best fitsyour needs, desires and financial situation. Then, by all means, jump into the deep side of the pool and savor the adventure.
Filling a Bucket of Water
Filling a bucket with water may not, at first glance, appear to have anything to do with making photography. However, I know of no better means of learning how shutter speed and aperture size react to each other to achieve proper exposure.
Once, long ago, I took a college level course in photography. One of the students in the class was a 19-year-old girl who had begun a career in fashion modeling at the age of 14. She had been exposed to top level fashion photography. When asked by the professor what kind of photography she wished to pursue, she indicated high fashion photography. She then added that she didn’t want to concern herself with things like F stops and shutter speeds. Good luck!
Now, about that bucket of water. In order to fill the bucket with water, you can turn the faucet on half way and fill the bucket for, let’s say, two minutes. Or you can turn the faucet on full strength and fill the same bucket in one minute. Both methods will fill the bucket. Likewise, a combination of aperture size (f stop) shutter speed achieves proper exposure.
Think of shutter speed as the strength of water flow and the aperture size as the amount of time the water flows. It then becomes easy to visualize how shutter and aperture work to achieve a given exposure.
That’s all for now. These tips will be up-dated periodically.
Adding a sense of nostalgia
One method of creating additional interest in an image is to create a sense of nostalgia. A close friend of mine, fellow photographer John Annesley, accomplishes this quite effectively by creating images of old cars. These old vehicles are often abandoned and left rotting in the desert. These vintage vehicles are being slowly absorbed back into the natural environment.
While photographing my father’s home town of Coleman, Texas several years ago, I took a photograph of an antique shop housed in an old service station. The shop specialized in old gas station memorabilia. After considerable digital manipulation to make the photo image appear to be of an actual service station of a much earlier era, I then used multiple editing programs to lend a dreamlike quality to the image.
The methods of imparting a nostalgic feel to an image are almost limitless. Experiment and discover what works for you. New tips will be posted periodically.
