A Workshop Completed

The photo above shows Joe and Dick on the left, participants, Jack centre right, the workshop leader, and Oscar our Indian guide.  This is not a good photo, but it will have to do as a photo journalistic type record of the group in action at Oscar's property in the Canyon de Chelley.  Gord, another participant is off to the right photographing, and I'm up an incline taking the shot of the pictographs shown three posts ago.

So why go to a workshop?  My objective was to have exposure to a professional photographer so that I could improve my ability to conceptualize a photograph before I setup the camera, to compose a better photo, to process photo's more successfully, and to find out what other people with a similar interest in photography are all about.  Add to this an interest in being in an location with lots of 'post card' shot opportunities.  It's great to start the photo process with strong photo ops - it aids the learning process.  In general, all my objectives were met in one way or another, and I think I left Arizona and Utah a better photographer.  I think the real gain for me is the envisioning of what I want from the photograph before I take it.  This is really big, and I can see this in the photos of pro photographers I look at.  A great photo is rarely accidental.

The other gain was greater insight into the power and speed of software like that from Nik Software.  Wow, it is amazing and speedy.

Perhaps one of the most unexpected benefits of this workshop was having time to take a picture.  Usually time is the enemy as people are waiting on me to finish so other things can happen.  Not on the workshop - time is lavishly available and modest investments with it yield rich rewards.  This is indeed a Nirvana.

So, I have many things to work on.  I need to practice photo conceptualization and composition.  More software familiarization and skill building is critical.  Some changes in my photo assets would be helpful - a tripod upgrade, an upgrade to the next level of neutral density filters, new panoramic stitching software, and the fill-in of a couple of missing lenses from my camera systems - both my Nikon and Pentax systems.  Other than that, my existing equipment and software worked well.

Someone said to me that once I take my first photo workshop I'll be taking them every year.  Well, that may be so!