Becoming More Skilled in Digital Photography

Instructor: John Klingel

Date: Saturday, October 6th

Time: 9am-4pm

Cost: Members $80 / Non-Members $100

Location: Offsite in Eastham (Location will be emailed by instructor)

Description: 

If you have a digital camera and you’re interested in improving your photographic skills and knowledge, this workshop offers an overview of various areas you need to learn more about. If you want to do more than point-and-shoot with a digital camera, you need to learn about various aspects of digital cameras and the techniques used to take a good photo. The primary objective of this seminar is to show you all the various aspects of digital photography that you will eventually need to learn to master if you’re interested in improving your skills. This seminar is for people who don’t use manual settings, don’t shoot in RAW, don’t understand depth of field, don’t understand basic composition and don’t use software to post process their photos. And it’s also a good introduction to digital for people who have always used film.

We’ll start with the camera and talk about some of the important features of digital cameras that many people don’t use but should. Topics will include:  An explanation of why cameras don’t see what the eye sees. Why shooting in RAW is important. Why you need to use manual settings to achieve proper exposure and understanding depth of field. What white balance and ISO settings to use and why the quality of light is more important than the quantity of light. You’ll also learn how to read a histogram and why it plays so important a part in producing good photographs.

I’ll also discuss some of the basic aspects of composition along with what’s involved with shooting back-lit objects, motion, bright objects, macros, and other difficult shooting situations. Most shots, even by professionals, can be improved significantly with post-processing.  We’ll go through many of the adjustments you can make in post-processing. The focus here will be on giving you an understanding of what you can easily do in post-processing and how to develop skills in this area. And we’ll review various software packages that are available for post-processing.

Instructor Bio:

John lives in California during the winter and is a member and past Vice-President of the Marin Photo Club. During about five months of the year, he lives in Eastham in an 1860’s farm house on Town Cove. In past years, he has taught HDR and Focus Stacking for the Cape Cod Art Association. John is an avid nature photographer and has traveled to many locations including Botswana and Borneo and to many locations in the US and Canada including Yellowstone, Basque del Apache, Machias Island, Monterey and the Triple D Ranch in Montana. You don’t have to travel to get great nature photos and one of John’s favorite shots is the “Herring Gull Eating a Herring” that was taken in Brewster. All of the Klingel workshops include handouts of all the presentation information and other reference material.