Photography Overload

Well the officially photography course part came to an end on Friday September 22nd after 5 days at Thanda with professional photographer Emil Von Maltitz.  You can check out his website at www.limephoto.co.za and you can check out the link to his blog http://emilvonmaltitz.blogspot.com/ which has tid-bits to help improve your photography skills.  He is full of energy and very excited and passionate about photography which made learning about it easier and fun.  He not only has a lot of knowledge on photographs, but on photography in general and its history.  It was nice to learn the reasons behind all the settings on my camera.

It was a pretty full on week with lots to cram into a short about of time.  I did my best to stuff my brain full of all the information that I could but I know a lot of it seeped out or just plain old didn’t fit.  The one day we started at 5:30 and didn’t quit until 9:30, so it was a long day on the old thinker.  Most of the people in the group have more experience and knowledge then I do and several of them have many years of ‘hobby’ photography behind them so they have a really great understanding of photos, composition and cameras.  It’s been handy using their knowledge since Emil left to help me out.  But during the course I did find myself lost many times as they all seemed to be 20 steps ahead of me.

We had 3 or 4 different assignments over the week to put into practice what we learned.  We would then go through each person’s 3 or 4 photos, vote on the best one, then critique each one so we could learn from it all.  I found these intimidating and nerve racking as I knew I was up against some great photographers.

Our first assignment was we were each giving a plant and we had to produce 3 different photos from that plant.  Our second assignment was to produce 4 photos from a game drive and one of them had to be only 1 element in the photograph.  I was quite excited about the picture of the one element that I took which was simply a rhino horn with grass all around it.  I got a lot of great feedback on it and Emil even said he wants to steal the idea from me.  So that helped to improve my confidence.  They also quite liked one of my other photos of a wildebeest.

At the end of our longest day, we learned how to paint with light.  Even though I was dog tired, I actually really enjoyed this and would like to play with it some more at home.  I did a simple one using a tree.  I don’t have the painting technique down yet but you get the idea.

Our last assignment was on the Friday and it was the one I liked least of all.  It was difficult, awkward and I had run out of steam for the week.  We had to pretend like our camp was a 5 star resort and had to photograph it to show it off. So we had to stage different scenes and be models and act and it was just not fun.  It really made me realize how many little details there are that go into those perfect shots that are on brochures.  We also had to do a portrait of someone.  I was really short on time so just snapped a shot of my roommate which didn’t really turn out.

All in all I had a great week learning about photography and improving my skills.  I’ve got a long way to go but that all just takes time and practice.  And I have another 3 weeks to hone my skills.  For the 3^rd weekend at Thanda, our group is heading to the Drakensburg Mountains for a 4 day photography course with Emil while hiking the area.  I’ve heard it is a beautiful, amazing experience even without the photography course.  Plus I am looking forward to learning some more tips and techniques from Emil while I am there.

Just a few of my 'photography' photos: