Photography Lessons...in the Cold

We’re lucky enough to be hosting this round of Photography Classes at the Caetani House. Beautiful venue, up in East Hill, in Vernon. It’s no secret how cold it gets though! When I left my car, it recorded a temperature of -18.

However, we had a full class, and it was time to learn long exposures. Class 2 is all about shutter speed. Rather than teach the exposure triangle in one class, we divide it into three classes. All the classes have their own workshop portion. That way, you can get some hands-on learning right after you learn the concept. It’s one thing to learn a concept, but it’s another to put it into practice.

So we set up our cameras and tripods on the corner, and got to work. Many students had tripods, but a few did not. No worries! You can put your camera down on your camera case, and that will steady it long enough to take a long exposure. If you shake while taking a long exposure, it will mess up the whole photo.

These are preparations for the first photo walk. It’s going to be at BX Dog Park, on Jan 28. The reason we talk about fast and slow shutter speeds to ready the students for any situation. You can take a long exposure of the creek, or a very quick exposure of the dogs running around. Plus it’s an off leash dog friendly park, so you can let your dog run free!

I ended this session with an extra challenge for the braver students. We set up a few tripods on the meridan, and took long exposure photos right down main street. They turned out amazingly! Everyone walked back to Caetani house with a smile on their faces. There were photos taken at 5 seconds, ten seconds, and 20 seconds. For the last few minutes, the students got to play around and put whatever shutter speed in that they liked. We had some fantastic results.

Now all that’s left is to see the homework. It’s amazing how quickly they learn with just a bit of instruction. This is one of the reasons I just love teaching, every group of students is different.

I’ve had a few people ask me when the next round is happening. I’ll be announcing it mid-February, and it will most likely happen in mid-march. I hope to pull off three rounds before wedding season. When the wedding season comes, it’s 80 hour work weeks for this photographer!

That’s all for now. If you’d like to stay updated about future classes or class times, feel free to follow me on Instagram, facebook, twitter, or Tumblr for frequent updates. Talk to you all in a few days!