Summing up what i learned this year part 1

2014 has been a great year for the course I was in. I have been into photography since 2006, but I was into very amateur point and shoot photography. In 2010 I bought my first SLR, a very basic Nikon d3000. In 2012 I had an unfortunate accident when my camera went for a swim in a small stream outside of Blackheath in the Blue Mountains (what can go wrong will go wrong, but that will be another post) so I ended up getting the Nikon d3100.
In 2010 I joined the Bathurst camera club on the advice from my Teachers at the Bathurst Tafe. This was fortunate as I found I learned off some of the more experienced photographers in the group for free, they did not provide any information on how to run a commercial photography business. They have encouraged me to complete the course and have been great for comments and criticisms on my work from this year and for that I am thankful. Since I had completed my diploma of gemmology in 2013 I was looking to improve my skills to sell myself as a photographer. Since I wanted to get into jewellery photography I knew I had to be accredited before jewellers would even consider contracting me.
First learning the proper concepts such as depth of field was a bonus. My photos were now finally in better focus and I finally got a better idea of how to properly use focus. So I was no longer using the aperture as a lighting mechanism.
So here are some of the subjects I learned this year at Orange Tafe.
Portraits.
The one genre I hope never to get into before (and after) I did cert four photo imagery. I found the different styles of portraits interesting and I found working with my fellow students to have built my skill in working with others
I do not want to get into portrait photography as I feel I do not connect well with people as well as I should.

Painting with light.
One of my favorite subjects from this year, getting us to create something amazing out of what would have been at best ordinary, for example one minor project this year I had to do three painting with light pictures. One of them was of a field in the front of my parents place in Bathurst during the day It is fairly bland to photograph. But at night I used two different lights with different light temperatures then combined with photos from different angles to create a almost surreal landscape photograph of the field at night.

Panoramas.
I did find taking panoramas fun, but unfortunately I do not travel as much as I used to so it will not be a skill  I will use often(kind of kills the enthusiasm when taking the same or similar shot over and over again on my parents place).
Maybe one day when I actually have money to travel.
Photo montages.
A mixed boat, I enjoyed learning some skill with Photoshop, the ability to use my imagination has slightly, improve my skills in creating and selecting my stock images to use and I now know how to properly record the steps and method I used to make the image.
Sadly enough as an amateur photographer, I soon found I had too much poor quality stock images (or images that were okay but I have no use for) to many to use or all the photos I want to use have been misplaced on the wrong hard drive.
In a way this year has made me aware of the need to improve the organisation of my hard drives.
Adobe Bridge
Bridge has been a godsend for my time certificate four photo imagery as it has made organisation of my images easy.  as there is nothing quite like searching for hours for a friend’s wedding only to realize that they are missing (bets on they were on your external hard drive that just crashed)
Photo shoots.
Well what's to say I learned about photo shoots in the second semester, it's more complicated than what I thought it would be. 

the first 'proper' photo shoot was taking and editing the portfolio photos for the Hair and makeup class at Orange Tafe. Exchanging our images for the use of their students as models.

First Problem we had delayed it due other students unable to come in for four weeks causing everyone involved grief. When the photo shoots date was finally confirmed we had to put off other non vital projects to make up the time.

On the 18th of August when we finally got the photo shoot I found there were little to no cooperation between the Students, whilst they were sort of easy to direct, they started to play up during photo shoot by distracting the other models during their sessions.
Personally i found this year it was easier to ask my fellow class to model easier than using other students who were studying to model. We respect each other and were generally easy to direct. but to be fair to the hair and make up class. we did delay their photo shoot and they had one set of the edited images delayed.

I am told next year in the diploma level of Photo imagery. we may end up actually working with professional models so this photo shoot will end up forgotten or a badly remembered nostalgic experience (personally I hope I forget it).Focus stacking

Towards the end of year I had enough of my poor quality photos most of them I think that they will be good enough to try and convince stock agencies that it is worth accepting my application to join.
So during class we had learned how to focus stack with various objects on Tafe’s studio table. But we never got around to putting the images together in Photoshop due to time constraints from the projects getting pushed back.
Originally I was happy with focusing entirely on the front of the mineral I was taking photos of, relying entirely up on a larger f stop to get everything into focus. Then wondering why I am unhappy with the final result. If you have read some of my other blog entries I go on a bit about my passion for mineral photography.

http://williamforbesphotography.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/what-i-love-doing-part-one-gems-and-my.htmlhttp://williamforbesphotography.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/what-i-love-doing-part-2-focus-stacking.html

So I will over this summer get my stock images together, what I do not sell online, I will post here on my blog.
End of year exhibition.
The last two terms we worked on an an assignment were we had to collaborate internally as a group and work with a second party, the diploma of fine arts students, on a exhibition to showcase the efforts put into the arts department this year.
My class was tasked to create the invitation for the exhibition. We at first were fairly happy about it, we on the first day back in August to come up with several names and designs to present to the fine arts students and their two teachers.
At our first meeting all our ideas except the use of rectangles was rejected. The entire meeting was dominated by the fine arts class and they decided on the name "arts back", at that point we had enough of them so we just accepted it and got started. Sadly this was not the last problem we had with working with the arts students.
Fist to go was the colour of the invitation, sadly one of my fellow students got into a fairly pointless fight with our teacher over the colour and left, at this stage of the year there was only four regular students attending classes so now it was down to the three of us to make the invitation. After the fight we just decided on white.
Then there was the selecting of the images to use on the invitation, we were to get one each, but there were issue with the arts students wanting several of their images on the invitation. We just went with one each. Luckily the other arts teacher was happy with the result of the layout and so that stayed, but was unhappy with the font we had chosen. In the end we settled with Lithos Pro, and told them that was what we were going with.
On the day of the final meeting with the Art’s students,  the teacher we had for the day brought in a copy of the invitation we had worked on and there was this funny scribbly white line now over the top of the rectangles, turned out our least favorite arts teacher had thought that there was not enough and got a photo of one of her tattoos on her back and slapped it right over the front of the invitation because as you know, everyone who would have seen this variation of the invitation would have thought, oh my ARTS BACK, Oh the GENIUS, OHHH THE DEPTH, no they would have seen was a awful scribbly line imposed on the top of the paintings and photos displayed on the invitation. This really caused a bit if furor with us, the photo imagery students who were present, so we decided to remove the scribbly line and replace it with a heartbeat. So when got that done, so the girls in my class who were Doing the editing found a heartbeat to use, everyone else just provided feedback on the positioning of the heartbeat on the invitation. Thankfully when we presented the copy to the Art’s Students they were happy with the design and layout of the Invitation and their teachers were pleased with the final result.
The exhibition has given me some experience with working with a conflicting party both internally and externally in how to resolve or attempt to resolve issues between conflicting parties.

again i congratulate Chloe Mackenzie and Jenny Davidson for the Time and effort in putting the invitation together.

That’s it for now I will go over more of my class lessons for this year when I have the time and will finish off in another blog post. Please note I am writing this out of hindsight to how well this year has turned out for everyone who stayed through to the end of the year. We certainly had good times this year; it has unfortunately been too easy to remember the bad times we had over the course of this year. Still this has given me ideas for my next post.

i hope i have not rambled on to much about this year.

An unexpected visitor

today i had a bit of a interesting morning with an unexpected visitor

got a few good shots of it lying about my parents sun room. thankfully it was pretty lethargic so i got some pretty ordinary shots of it.

i am not really into animal photography but occasionally i come across some pretty nice reptiles around the place.

i only wish that i saw him in his natural environment.that would have been a good photo shoot (provided i had my camera). Thankfully this was not as bad as other reptiles that have wandered into my parents place. back in 2004 on boxing day we found a baby brown snake in under the Christmas tree. 

i usually see about one to three snakes per year in their own environment and i am happy with that. It could be worse, i might not get to see them to me i am not scared of snakes or lizards but i don't go out of my way to find them. i prefer to not put ones self in danger or cause them any grief.