The Versace Vision

Well Vincent (Versace) isn't here, but no one has attempted to give the class a new name, so after a restless night's sleep, I'm off to class at the Bill Campbell Digital Institute and Nature Gallery.

I arrive promptly at the appointed hour to find Al, one of the students, already conversing with our instructor Bill Campbell. Since Bill is a MD turned photographer, and Al is a pharmicist, they are talking shop...medical shop. I remain clear of that conversation.

About 10 mintues later, Carol arrives. An Oak Ridge native, she is the only female in the class of three students. But my the time she arrives, the conversation has turned to Nikon vs. Canon, and Carol, a Canon user, will not win arguments with the three Nikon bigots well on the way to espousing the virtues of Nikon cameras and glass.

In no hurry we converse for a while. The conversation is good, and we get to peruse some of Bill's work on display in the gallery. Some new ideas here for displayiong your photography.

But after a while we start. It becomes quickly apparent that I am the advanced Photoshop user for this class. But it also becomes apparent that with the class size I'm not going to have any problem getting my questions answered. Plus, it's stroking my ego...to have the instructor look at you prompting you for your opinion when a question is asked by the other two students.

Stoked ego or not, I'm learning. Exposure was one of my concerns. We learn some techniques to help. I learn more about processing RAW files giving me greater control over what I get out of the camera. We talk about hardware and how to set it up (mine is in good shape.) And we look at ways to combine photos to make one shot that is properly exposed.

It's a good morning and goes quickly.

I skip lunch due to an upset stomach (could it be those Krystals I had at Strawberry Plains last night...surely not.)

After lunch we talk about shooting techniques some more then off to the UT Arboretum for an afernoon shoot. Carol has invited her teenage daughter and a friend to come and act as models for us. So we work on outdoor portraiture for a while, learning the value of reflectors for punching light into a subject with out using flash.

But I'm more interested in the flowers and treee and soon drift off to shoot those. And do till we break for supper about 5:00. (My supper is a Subway turkey sandwich...easy on the stomach. And now I'm beginning to feel better.)

We reconvene at 7:15 and edit photos until 9:30. This makes for a long day.

Alas, the wind did in most of my pictures of flowers. Just too blurry to be good enough for publication. So there will be no picture of the day today.

Tomorrow, we meet @ 6:30 for the morning shoot. So now I must go to bed.

Goodnight.