Yesterday night I presented a custom version of my popular “Travel Photography” workshop to the Oakville Seniors’ Photography Club.
I have seldom met a nicer bunch of people. They were also very engaged : in fact my one-hour version was so well received that it became a two-hour version, and no-one left. I have a feeling I could have done the full three hour version and they would still all have stayed.
Photography is a great hobby to take up -any time, even when you retire. Modern, and in particular digital, technology has added fundamentally to what we can do in the following ways:
- Modern cameras can do more!
- Modern flash (with TTL metering) is easy to use.
- Photography is now cheap – it no longer costs $20 every time you use it.
- So your money can go to lenses, instead
- And finally the most important one: we get instant feedback, to see if what we did worked. You can now learn something in an hour that would have taken a year, back in 1975.
All you now need is training. Please get some, if you haven’t yet. It is amazing what a short course can do to enable you to use this technology properly!
And then, once you know how it all works, you can move on to producing art.
And that’s where seniors, with their life experience and available time, have an edge. Everyone can learn, but when you have those two, you can put that learning to good use.
I found this entirely true in another type of shooting class. “You just don’t know what you don’t know” I’m reading a lot more on photography, but I agree, I really need to find a good, live class. I think it will be well worth the time and effort to attend.
Indeed.. I assure you it will. You will learn 100 times faster than you would from books. It is amazing what interactivity, feedback, and the ability to ask questions do to speed up the learning. Enjoy!
Well Gar I read a few books on photography myself, I bought a book that was made just for my camera. Last week I invested just short of 4hours and a little bit of money with Oakville award winning photographer Michael Willems.
Gar I also strongly recommend a lesson or two with Michael or if you’re not from Southern Ontario, maybe a pro photographer near you. A smaller group would be the best, max three people. One-on-one is the best, you can ask question, and a lot of them.
Michael I am sure that group would have sat for a few more hours, your classes are mostly hands on, that makes the time fun and interesting.