Totally Inspired!

Wow! Thats all I can say really! Well ok, you know me, I can easily say much much more than just WOW!

Anna, Annie and I had a fantastic time in Reading and I can honestly say its like a little light has switched on in my head and I now know I can move on from taking some photos I like to taking photos I really love. For anyone wanting to improve their photography skills I would seriously recommend investing in a course at The Photography School. Freddie and Mark were great teachers but also ensured that we not only learned loads but that we also had a blast too (oh and they fed us well too - lasagne and pizza mmmmmmmm! LOL)

I am seriously tempted to save up and go for their portraits course. Before I went my honest opinion was that the money it would cost to go on the second course would be better spent on a new lens but having learned so much on this first course I think now I may have been wrong and I would be better investing in myself first and learning what I can do to get the best out of the stuff I have, then in more kit if I can't do the things I want to do with what I already have.

Anna is doing a piece about it for Creative Scrapbooking and Freddie took a group shot of us all to go with the piece. Anna will e mail it over when she has it and I will put it on the blog. In the meantime I will add a few pics I took on the course, no doubt there will be more added in future blog entries too! The camera at the top of this entry was such fun to take. We were taking long exposures in a darkened room and "painting with light" it was so cool to play with different lighting conditions.

The dark portrait is of Freddie, we were experimenting with low key lighting and I wanted to get him just appearing from some dark shadows.

Finally I am going to HAVE to add my train picture! We were wandering round Reading taking photos of all manner of things found in the urban environment and we stood by the train tracks for a while. We were taking pictures at a shutter speed which would capture some motion but leave the subject recognisable and I wanted to get a train just coming in to shot. Of course I kept missing them (although later I said that I was waiting for a nicer looking train!) Anyway, finally i got this shot and as you can see I photoshopped it within an inch of its life but I love it even if it is kind of weird looking!

OK now I just have a craft fair to get ready for and a class to finish designing and writing instruction (or should that be directions Annie?) for... by this evening!