Photography workshop.

Last week we attended a 3 hour workshop on digital photography over at Bundoora Homestead, conducted by Adam, who is a photographer with Leader Newspapers. I have been using my new camera non stop since we bought ourselves new cameras after I dropped my old one some months ago. But once Ken took his Nikon out of the box, looked at the instructions and decided it was too hard, he hasn't touched it since. I decided to book him into this workshop with me to force him to use his new camera. He was very reluctant at first, and for the first ten minutes of the lecture, he twiddled his thumbs and kept looking at his watch. I just ignored that, and eventually he realised that he could probably learn something if he paid some attention to Adam. Adam showed us some of his photos and explained what techniques he used to get the effects, and then he instructed the class to go out and take photos around the property, choose the best one and come back inside. I pounced on him as soon as everyone else left the room, and explained why I'd brought Ken with me. Adam was really great - he had a look at the Nikon and told Ken he'd made a good choice of camera, and once he learnt how to use it, his photos would be excellent. He figured out how to work it, and showed Ken, then we went off to take our photos. Here are all the ones I took.
This is the only one I took outside. Everybody else was out there too, taking similar shots in different angles, so I decided to go back inside the homestead.

Adam had talked about the effects of taking photos in various light situations, and I liked this shot of facing into the sunny window of the cafe, turning the people into silhouettes.

The Gallery had some interesting sculptures on display, so I took some shots there.

This closeup was taken using the flash.

Same sculpture without the flash - notice the dark background in comparison to the one above.

I rather liked this parade of Penguin protestors!

The beautiful old staircase is always worth taking a photo of.

This photo of Ken's reflection in the mirror of the hall stand is the one I chose to submit for Adam's evaluation.  He had explained to us how to take photos of mirror images without the flash bouncing back at you, and I was really pleased with this.  Ken says he looks like a ghost!   Adam complimented me on the picture, with a hint on framing the image a bit better.

All in all, a very productive day for both of us, at only $10 each.