Vertical learning curves and brain fade...

It's 10:30pm, someone in a unit nearby has the music up, maybe we can hear it because the doors are open, it's warm...

My brain is in a weird tired overdrive...

Have you ever had so much information coming at you that by midday you are getting frustrated with yourself because you can't remember how to do what you quite clearly were capable of yesterday?

From the start at work today I was trying to catch up. The comment I heard towards the end of the day was "why am I having to tell you things twice?"

I know the answer... I don't yet know how to do what you are telling me to do and telling me once isn't enough!

I am most definitely getting faster though and today I finished everything on the job sheet; which was a first... Yay me... Except for the CD that wouldn't burn properly and then the second one that did the same thing??? May have done something wrong there...

As much as my employer is pushing me and as frustrated as I get with myself things are improving. I have to remind myself that I have only worked in that environment for a total of six or seven days... Plus a few weddings now...

Then home is fairly intense at the moment read about it at Cinta's blog. Things will be better there from next week as Cinta completes the fun run and gets into the course; as I have no doubt she will... (Interviews and exams where you aren't sure what the questions will be about and what will be required are always stressful)...

Summer Break Assignment

Here's the brief; I have to present a single image for each of 10 subjects. They must be creative and I can take as many images as I like but I can only present the 10 best images.

1. Something cool...
2. Something you can't touch...
3. Something small...
4. Something of my town that would attract overseas tourists...
5. Something that sells renewable energy...
6. Something that shows an Australian summer through recreation...
7. An image that can only mean one thing...
8. A landscape at dusk or moonlit...
9. An image where music is the theme...
10. A publicity image of myself...

At last the fun stuff begins. This is the first "creative" assignment for the course, the previous assignments are to show that you know how to work your camera... I already have some ideas (I can't touch my toes, for example! LOL Seriously; if I can find a rainbow with the moon behind it I may be on to a winner - this will lead nicely into the moonlit landscape). If you come up with any ideas let me know.

These images must be taken on 35mm slide film rated at 100 ISO so the technical side of getting an image to work without any manipulation or post processing comes in to the mix as well.

Now the real fun begins!!!

Photoshop

Wow, I knew you could do some stuff in photoshop... Serious stuff! I thought I had some of it learned and felt that I could get things done. (I really knew that I wasn't up to commercial stuff)...

How silly you can be? Imaging thinking that your amateur fumblings would cut it in the commercial world. I have heaps to learn and have already learned quite a bit (mostly that I can get things done but I take too long!). So the next few days will be dedicated to photoshop, a wedding shoot, a trip to Sydney to have a look at and hopefully purchase a car (subject for another entry). That's if I can fit it around the cleaning, washing, eating, excercising, sleeping that are requirements...

I can now, slowly, process a series of images and:

• Match exposures
• Match colours
• Add fill light
• Bring back highlights
• reduce shadows under eyes and around the face
• generally fix minor problems (the wardrobe error that I tried to fix yesterday would have been so much easier to fix before the photo was taken - the clients had already approved the photo for a poster without noticing it.)
• Move and resize images into pre-designed album pages

With about 600 images per wedding (+/-) just the first four on that list takes about an hour if the photographer is consistent with their settings.

And we got our first "creative" assignments from school this week. The first couple were "make sure you know how to use a camera" assignments. This means that over the next couple of months I will be out with my camera. The brief is quite simple and yet stimulatingly complex... EG: present a single image - a photograph of "cold". I'm looking forward to making things frosty! Stay tuned...

Last Day... New Beginning...

The very last day of pre-hospital emergency care for me... For 30 years now this is what I have done. Ever since I saw an ambulance at a hospital careers day in my first year of high school. With time in the army as a medic, work as a nurse in a small (tiny) country hospital and a large city hospital, 12 years of ambulance work and for the last 9 years first aid training. It has finally come to an end.

It was all I ever wanted to do.

To expect things to stay the same is silly, life progresses and needs change.

Throughout my life I have had an interest in photography and, if you have been reading my blog, that's what I am pursuing now. Time to let the creativity out and now it's official.

Today is a day of running around and getting stuff sorted out and finished off. Tomorrow I am off to work as a photographer/assistant.

And so a new chapter begins. Deep breath... Plunge in!

First Photos

Wow, this wedding photographer gig is both hard work and fun... I certainly have a greater respect for what they do having run around for a couple of days taking images and then sitting down to process them.

The two images I have here are from Mark & Alicia's wedding on Friday and Ruben & Chantel's wedding on Sunday. They were all fun to work with and I appreciate the experience. It's fun to be around people who are both very excited and very distracted by proceedings.

Congratulations to all...

PS: If you know of any good photo locations around Melbourne could you please pass them on? We had a hiccup where a location needed to be booked and wasn't so we had to try and find another, at very short notice. You can imaging the running around and the pressure applied to both bride and groom and the photographers.

My first official (paid) day as a photographer...

This is it! My first outing with a camera that I am to be paid for. Finally I'm going to be able to start justifying spending so much money on gear. I will try and post tonight with a photo...

Photographers first day...

Well, I've had my first day with my new employer... I processed some images, tried to learn how to send off images to the printer (most user unfriendly program ever devised!!!), learned a bit about how things work and suggested to Mark (the boss) that maybe a server would be better than having images on every computer in the place...

My first wedding, as an assistant, is on tomorrow with another one on Sunday... Nothing like getting started... The pay is ok as an assistant but to be the lead photographer is a much better wage so working towards that will be the next step. Mark also wants me to do sales and when the studio is set up portraiture.

It looks like this will be a fun and exciting learning experience. Bring it on!

School last night was good too. The girls are starting to look at me everytime there is mention of a piece of equipment as they think I might already have one. So far it seems I have... It has made me realise that my business really did do ok and I got some nice toys from it. The trouble is that cash is flowing out at a bit faster rate than it is coming in at present and the next round of toys might have to wait a while... Oh well, I should use up the toys I have before I get any more anyway...

We learned a little more about aperture and how it has an affect on the depth of field. There was some discussion about circles of confusion (Imagine sharp focus as a pinpoint. Anything in front or behind the item in sharp focus will be out of focus. The human eye cannot distinguish between a pinpoint and a small circle. The items that are in front of or behind the focus point will create small circles of light rather than a pinpoint. This allows for an area before and after the pinpoint to appear sharp with human eyesight) and I think Brian will discuss hyperfocal distance with us next week. Imaging using a magnifying glass to burn paper. To do this you have to focus the light to as sharper point as you can. If you lift the magnifying glass away from the paper, or towards it, you will get a circle of light that is not sharp enough to create heat once it is over a certain size...

Oh well... It makes sense to me...

Photographer or Photoshop expert?

It all started with a quick trip to the Adobe website. I went there in search of any updates for Photoshop and found a reference to a "Masterclass" in Melbourne. It was free to register so what did I have to lose?

The course/lecture was yesterday and there were over 100 people who turned up to have a look. The lecturer was a "world renowned" photographer (don't get me started on Americans being the champions of the world... Like the World Series of this or that that is only run and won in the US and no one else even knows it happened!). It turns out that you can be a world renowned photographer by being a photographer that works for Adobe and lectures around the world on how photoshop works...

In saying that Julieanne Kost is indeed a good photographer who is an awesome power user of photoshop and all of the associated programs, having worked for Adobe since 1993.

Have you ever been to a product information session that inspired you to buy the product and then when you got it home you couldn't work out how to use it? It looked easy when the expert, who has been using it since they knee high, demonstrated it!!!

Anyway, I guess there's a whole 'nuther learning curve in front of me...

The photography course last night was good. Brian was back and we had a look at how lenses worked and the relationship between the focal length of the lens and the aperture and how that affects the amount of light that gets to the film. I'm glad that there are experts out there who make lenses and get the maths right! About the only thing that Brian didn't mention last night was that the more light that a lens can allow to get to the film in the shortest time, the more expensive (and bigger, he mentioned that) the lens will be... Brian had some of his good lenses and his professional film camera there for us to look at and, I have to admit, a little bit of lens lust happened on my behalf... If I was able to sell my left kidney I may, just may mind you, be able to afford some of the gear that I want but don't really need... Yet!

There are so many excellent and creative photographers out there, will we ever be as good as them? What will it take? What will it cost in time, effort, commitment and money?

There is one other thing I have been mulling over in my mind. Ben mentioned last week that when he first started as a wedding photographer he was allowed to use three rolls of film. One for the bridal party preparing for the wedding, one for the ceremony and one for the formal portraits after the wedding. 36 images in total for the whole wedding. For this he was paid $35.00 (it was the early 70s) but if he mucked up a shot he was docked $5, if he mucked up 2 shots he was docked $15 and if he mucked up 3 shots he wasn't paid. He got good quick!

Nowdays, with digital cameras, it isn't unusual to take 3000 images of a wedding! 3000 images to take, process, select from, maniplate and WADE THROUGH PER WEEK! Wouldn't it be a better option to take 300 good images and work with them than to just keep pressing the shutter button and hoping for a good image?

Yesterday Julieanne mentioned that as a (World Renowned) photographer she expects that she will only use 10% of her images and of those only 1 will be really good. Hmmm, if a photographer makes a living on 1% of their images there are only two options.

1. Take more photos.
2. Increase your skill so that your percentages increase.

I know which I will be aiming for, I want to be a photographer, not a photoshop expert...