Today marks the end of my photography class. Missed one lesson on Halloween due to me wanting to see the parade. Heh, overall, I think it was money well spent. What was valuable to me was that the teacher pointed me in the right direction of where I should be looking, and it helped me to figure out the rest.

To a certain degree, I’m more comfortable with my D70 now than I ever was. At least I know that when I point and shoot something now, I’m aware of the settings the camera are shooting at and I know roughly what I want to get out of the image. I am also getting a more accurate exposure reading from the manual process of spot metering or just exposure compensation when I’m lazy. Heh, it’s like cooking, I know my picture won’t be half baked if I am putting in enough effort to get the image I want.

Heh, spending less time post processing images. No need to crop as much, or to adjust to get slightly richer colours (proper exposure helps a bit). These days, I can also spot a scene more easily and know that it would make a nice image in the camera.

I have learnt quite a bit on taking pictures, and am always humbled when looking at professionals do their job, especially wedding photographers when they capture the moment. To me, it’s no longer about the equipment, whether you shoot Nikon or Canon or what lenses you use. Sure, professional equipment helps, but it only speeds up things for event photography. It adds value when you need to focus in low light, or to get that creamy out of focus bokeh, . If you had time to fiddle around, any basic DSLR or even a point and shoot can get you great photos. In the end, it also depends on the final audience of the image and the medium it’s presented in. If you are doing web photos, or just making 4 x 6″ prints, you can get away with the imperfections of your imaging equipment (like sensor noise or less than tack sharp lenses). If you are doing more professional work, you can go the whole nine yards with monitor calibration, printer calibration, the kind of image converter for your files etc.

Still have a long way to go with learning, but I’m interested enough to keep going at it.

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The temperature felt like it plummeted 10 degrees overnight. It’s around 10 degrees Celsius in NY now. Heh, I can only imagine it will get lower and so far keeping warm enough with the clothing I have. My Melbourne gear keeps me warm up to around zero I suppose, so if it gets any cooler, I will have to get slightly thicker and warmer wear. I’m not even sure how I will deal with snow as a daily occurrence. Heh, never experienced it at sea level before, so this will be interesting for me, whether I will welcome the experience or not.