Always Learning

I am taking a new photography class. This one is a bit different as it is online but live, with assignments, due dates and everything! Most of my online classes are pre-recorded and it is easy to fall behind or not even finish! This is why I prefer in person classes and now this new program I am taking through the Bryan Peterson School of Photography.

David Niven said, “Never stop learning and adapting. The world will always be changing. If you limit yourself to what you knew and what you were comfortable with earlier in your life, you will grow increasingly frustrated with your surroundings as you age.” How many of you took some sort of online or other form of learning while we were in lockdown?

I feel like this is an industry that likely went crazy during COVID-19 and probably will for a while longer. What courses did you take? I did all quilting or photography related courses, read several photography related books by Scott Kelby, watched a TON of YouTube instructional videos and finally when we could go out did a small (socially distanced) Abandoned Alberta in person class with Rob Scott.

These are the first two weeks of assignments for the latest (four week) course by Bryan Peterson I am taking. The course is called The Art of Seeing. I hope you like them.

The first week was all about Line, Texture, Colour and Pattern. This was my submission for Texture. This beautiful roping is wrapped around some very big trunks of trees that have been used to hold the signage for The Marina, where we keep our boat.

Assignment: Leading Lines. The good advice (critique) from my instructor was that I should have moved in a bit further so as to avoid that black fencing on the right side and to get down a little lower. I will go back!

Pattern: It is found in nature where ever you look. The very good advice that I received was to brighten this up in Photoshop. I haven’t done that yet but I will and trust me, he made this photo go from “meh” to “wow” with just a couple of slider moves.

And here we are in Week 2. It was all about the use of our wide angle lenses. Most of us find this lens difficult to produce anything worth looking at so the lessons here were truly invaluable! This assignment was Wide Angle using Texture so I framed this boat (my neighbours, not mine) with the branches of a tree growing beside our docks. If I got a ‘grade’ I would say they were giving me a B+

Assignment 2: Wide Angle using Lines, see what I did with my lines? I made an angle! Again, as far as a grade, I would say maybe a B++ or A-! You just can’t fail with the reflections on a lake at the Golden Hour, right? A little cropping would have made this better was the advice.

Wide Angle from Above. This is much harder than it seems. It is hard to find places where you are looking directly down on something. I had thought it was going to be easy… we were headed into the Okanagan wine region and I thought, ‘No problem, vineyards from above, easy peasy.’ Nope, instead you get a railing and tree shadow from Burrowing Owl Winery. It’s pretty though and I was happy that the critique was not too harsh!

Well, that is the first two weeks and the first six assignments. I am loving this class and have to thank one of my YYC Photography Group mates for recommending Bryan Peterson’s courses

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