The Nursery & Photography

After a month or so of emails with Tim last week I ended up hosting the London leg of the Nursery workshop which Tim runs.
Tim is a wedding photographer in Sydney and, until last week, a stranger, but the internet and the blog community is a funny old thing and I really didn't think twice about offering my home to be Tim's classroom for the day, plus I got to do the course which was more of an incentive than I needed.

And so it came about that I met Tim, Kesh and Roo and ten other women wanting to learn.

Click: Some of my fellow students, including Flannery O'Kafka and Nell from First Day of Marriage  

I love my camera and I love taking photos. By real world standards: I take a lot of photos (by blogger standards I take an average amount of photos).
Photos serve a great purpose in my quest to document my life, why I want to do that I'm not sure, but it seems to be my urge and so therefore my lot.

Considering I spent four years at art school I often feel like my photos should be a lot better.
I'm a bit lazy, I don't move my feet enough to get the shot without the clutter in the background, or the more interesting light and I don't line up the lines (Tim is VERY good at lining up his lines) but a day of talking photography has inspired me to buck up and try harder. Tim's enthusiasm for story-telling images and his real passion for capturing families and connections between people is contagious, but also, he made me realise that I've been trusting the auto setting on my camera for way too long.




Kesh - our gracious model

So my two lessons from the nursery are these:
1. My camera is staying in manual mode. I'm making the exposure decisions now.
2. I'm going to observe more - not just click away, but observe and be IN the moment - so that I can anticipate better when the shot that will really tell the story will be there to be taken.

My third lesson is that I may invest in some fancy VSCO filters… or I might even use us all the out-of-date film I found in the recent clear outs. But, probably in the long run buying the filters is going to be cheaper.

So... let me know if you see any improvement.