I just got back from Nature Photography class and wish I had some images to post, but the class was a slide film class and all the images are on slides. The instructor, Don McGowan, is a wonderful teacher and Nature Photographer. He is a purest in that he would love to still be using film, but has made the transition from film to digital because of necessity. There are so few labs processing film now that he had to drive over 6 hours on Thursday to get our 25 to 30 folls of film developed.
The class was not what I had expected as I thought I would be allowed to use my digital camera and was irritated for the first two days because I had brought my digital as well as film so that I could learn to shoot manually on my digital. Not So! We learned on slide film so that we did not know until Thurs. evening whether we had any good images. I was pleasantly surprised when I opened my first tray of slides. I only had about ten slides out of 144 that were completely black or white. We had to choose 5 slides to be critiqued on Thurs. night. a cratique of 30 slides that lasted 4 hours. But what a wonderful feeling to see your sharp crisp slides on a large screen. Few mistakes here and there with the major portion being in composition and little branches or grass fronds getting in the picture. We did learn that the lense sees more than the view finder in some cameras so you have to focus in much tighter to get those things out of your image. Notice I say image and not picture. Pretty cool, huh.
If you are looking for a wonderful week long or weekend experience with arts or crafts, you need to check out John C Campbell Folk School in Brasstown NC. It is a great way to learn a craft of and art that you might not know anything about. It was amazing that the folks taking weaving had never done it before and by the end of the week they had woven over 5 yeards of fabric and had mad a bag with the material they had woven. Those who had never made baskets had baskets and jewelry made from weaving wire. Silk paintings, felting paintings, one class even made a rocking chair using primitive tools. And, the majority of the students had never done that craft before, but had the desire to do it.
For me, learning to use the manual setting on a camera has helped me learn the technical terms that I needed to learn.
When i get my slides transfered to digital, I will be able to show some of my work.
