a confused quasi-photographer (or so i like to think)

What is it that you're finding frustrating/discouraging and daunting about the classes, gracie?

There are a lot of beginner courses and photo groups and all kinds of resources available.

What kind of pictures do you like to take?

HEY!! what's with the 'say goodnight, gracie' bit?? lol

thanks for getting back to me. i wasn't sure how this whole a2k thing worked given the fact that im newly hatched (or something along those lines) and wasn't sure if it's cliquey or if random people reply to newbies like moi.

so here's my dilemma..i look at the course catalogues and see things like:

photograph design
photography I, II, III
photography food, food II, food III
photography people
photography fashion
photography interior
photography product
photography business
photography wedding
photography imaging
photography digital
photography film
photography developing
photography processing

the list goes on, and on, and on...i just want something basic that's introductory-like and perhaps touches on a few of the aforementioned subjects, i suppose im being picky (ya, right)

are you involved in photography? if yes, how so? could you recommend beginner things i need to learn?

Hi gracie girl and welcome to a2k. Anyone who feels they have something to contribute jumps in. Here I am. Credentials: worked in and managed camera stores for a period of over 30 years. I really think you don't need schooling but only some how to's which is easily supplied with Kodak how to books. The rest is intuitive which you supply. Your money is better used buying film and processing. Learn from mistakes. You soon learn to recognize mistakes. Examples include but are not limited to branches sticking out og people's heads. Busy backgrounds when you intend to focus and draw attention to an object or person. Apply patience unless you're doing grab shooting. Walk around objects you intend to photograph to see how the shift in perspective alters how you see it. Think about what part of the scene to want to include.

Indoor shooting using floods and spotlights is more involved but the principles remain the same. Do you use a manual camera? If not, youre giving up some creativity. Working with lights you have to have a main and a fill light. But the books will tell you that. Don't try too much at once. Decide first of all what you want to concentrate on. When you feel you're comfortable, move on. Set goals for yourself. Feel free to come back for more info at any time. If you do flesh out your request so we can fine tune your options.

Ha! The "Say goodnight, Gracie" refers to one of my favorite people - Gracie Allen, a very funny lady who I admire.

Bobsmyhawk offers some great advice - a guy who works in camera sales and doesn't come on like a gear head! There ain't nothing better than that.

Kodak offers some great online courses too - well worth checking out.

I'm a professional portrait photographer. I've had my own studio for about 15 years. (I've been posting some of my new ideas here: http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=46316&highlight= if you want to get an idea of what I do.)

I asked the questions I did because the kind of photos you like to take will really dicatate where to start.

I went to a very well known and respected art school and hated every minute of it. I transferred to a technical art school and loved it. Where to start and what to learn really depend on what you want to do with photography.

I know that studying photography can be very intimidating. When I was in school it was still very much a "guy thing". Photography is such a cool combination of art and science. It's hard to know where to start.

Photo I is always a good place.

Gracie, I'd say you've gotten some good advice here. If I might offer my own, typically random, take here -I've been a photography buff for comin' on to 50 years now. If you really want to "Learn Photography", I think the best - the only - way to go about it is first to learn and become workingly comfortable with the mechanics and craft of the art. Once you have "How" and "Why" down, "What" pretty much comes naturally.

A community college or camera club in your vicinity may offer a basic photography course - the basics of camera operation and darkroom technique, the "rules" of exposure and composition. Learn about f-stops and focal length and aperture. Learn about depth-of-field, and how that differs from depth-of-focus (yes, there's a difference - an important one). Learn about filters and polarizers and perspective and perspective shift. Learn about contrast, and lattitude, tonal range and grey scale. Learn about lightin' and light ratios and light manipulation. Learn about reciprocity and saturation, about differential and effect filterin', and how and why to use which. Learn about ISO ratings/film speed, learn about density and highlight and shadow and flare and distortion. Learn the ins-and-outs of light meterin' - spot meterin', center-weighted meterin', averaged meterin', and why and when you'd wanna use which, and what to meter. Learn about black&white film processin', and black&white enlargin'/print makin'. Learn about burnin' and dodgin' and croppin' and texturin' in the darkroom.

Shoot lots and lots and lots of black&white film, and make lots and lots and lots of black&white prints - the object there is not snapshots (use a digital camera for those) or masterpieces (those will come in time - given the right foundation), the object is to learn how to MAKE a good picture. At the beginnin', totally forget about color. Once you've learned to MAKE consistently good black&white photos, there is little if any challenge to color - its just another variable. Get the background, and you'll find it astoundingly easy - and rewarding - to recognize and TAKE good photographs as opposed to merely "takin' pictures". Someone once said the secret to good photogrphy was to get the exposure right, get it in focus, and be there at the right time. Thats pretty much all there is to it - you just hafta learn how to get the exposure and focus right for the effect you're after, and how to recognize, or how to structure, the "where" and "when".

Get yourself a good, workin', vintage, manual-exposure, manual-focus 35mm SLR - many can be found for $100 or less. For lenses, I'd suggest a moderate wide-angle - a 28MM, a "Normal" lense - a 50mm, and a moderate-range tele-zoom - say somethin' in the 75mm-135mm range - nothin' longer than 180, mebbe 200mm (longer focal lengths are hard to hand hold, and are less forgivin' of focus error) Don't waste money on ultra-fast lenses; f/2 or even f/2.8 is fine for the wideangle, f/1.8 or f/2 will do for the "Normal", and the zoom really needn't be any faster than about f/3.5 or f/4. Sharpness and overall performance are what to look for, and generally will be found most readilly among the optics offered by your camera's manufacturor. Bargains abound - seek 'em out. Get a fairly powerful, shoe-mounted, bounce-head flash, and a sturdy tripod. You don't hafta get all this at once; start with just the camera body and either the normal or wide-angle lense, if thats more fiscally feasible. If its gomma be just one lens to start with, I'd really lean toward the wide-angle; its often far more practicle to get closer to your subject than to get further away. One caveat - wide-angles are not well suited to portraiture - for that you rally nead a moderate telphoto- sonething in the 80-100mm range is more or less the standard there, and would be encompassed by a moderate zoom. If you do go for a zoom, go for the highest possible performance you can afford. Zooms as a category tend to be less sharp, lless contrasty, and more flare-prone than prime, or single-focal-length lenses. While 3rd-party examples of excellent quality do exist, without knowin' what you're lookin' for, you're prolly very much better advised to stick with a zoom of the same make as your camera. One area it doesn't pay to cut corners is optics. Get the best lenses you can afford; the rest of your rig is no better than the lens hangin' off the front of your camera. A state-of-the-art, pro-level, feature-laden, fully automatic high-buck camera body with a "bargain" lens is gonna take pretty much the same pictures you'd get with a bargain camera and bargain lens together, while a simple, manual-operation bargain camera body with an excellent lens is perfectly capable of producing absolutely astoundin' results. All a camera body is, really, is a box in which to store film untill its placed behind the lens and exposed.


And shoot and shoot and shoot and don't be afraid to take chances, or to make mistakes, or to bend - even break - the "Rules" once in a while.

And learn - learn from your successes, and build on 'em. Learn from your failures and near misses, too - analyze 'em, figure out what went wrong, and how to avoid that in the future, keepin' in mind, however, just how you managed the screwup in the first place - ya never know but what that particular technique or application might someday be used to great creative effect :wink:


Oh, yeah, and did I mention take lots and lots and lots of pictures, and make lots and lots and lots of prints - I mean, really make the prints yourself - in a darkroom?

Master basic camera and darkroom operation and theory, black&white, first. As I said earlier, color is just another variable. The chemistry is different, the medium is a bit less forgivin' than black&white, and pricier, but over all, thats about it.


Once you know the craft, the art is up to you. Without the craft, its all but impossible to achieve the art ... whether you use a digital camera or a film camera, the process of turnin' light into an image is pretty much the same - all that really differs is how that image finally is presented and viewed.

Once you know how to use carpenter's tools, or a mechanic's tools, and why and when to use what tool, buildin' a house or fixin' a car is easy. Once you learn how to use a photographer's tools, photography is easy. Same deal, really, only not so much sweat, heavy liftin', and muscle-strain. And ya generally don't get anywhere near as dirty.

gracie.girl- Welcome to A2K!


http://www.goines.net/Writing/say_goodnight_gracie.html

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boom..
bobs
timba (my take on your name)
phoenix

i find myself on the verge of of giving up entirely now, that was soo much to consume (again with the overwhelming lol). seriously though i feel i may have painted an inaccurate picture, one which renders me totally unknowledgeable (is that even a word?) and inexperienced with a camera, not the case. i have snapping photos as far back as i can remember. im not about taking pictures for the sake of having a shot of a group of 6 friends, i love to capture the moment, personify emotions, focus on objects/people/things which wouldn't be the focus of most other's work.

my query was more about digital vs. film/focus/lens/lighting/focus/equipment/floods and so on and so on and so on. i guess more technical. i know nothing about photography equipment and would hate to make any haste decisions without some research..ya know what i mean??

so i guess my question to you all is what equipment to you prefer?
digital vs. film? what is the difference?

you guys all rock, i sincerely appreciate your help (and time).

frigid and cold,
gracie

Well, if you're familiar with the mechanics of cameras, and have some workin' knowledge of the properties of light, you've got a huge part of it handled already. I'd suggest you take a look at courses centered on composition, and studio lightin' courses.

An excellent self-teachin' method is to study the works of the giants of photography, to analyze their photos, determine and reproduce yourself the effects they achieved. I'm old fashioned myself - I figure the picture is made in the viewfinfer; get the composition and lightin' the way you want 'em when you capture the image- thats the difference between makin' good photographs and just takin' pictures.

For equipment, if you do go digital, I'd recommend you look at a "pro-sumer" removeable-lens SLR. You'll get plenty of resolution - more, in fact than available with conventional consumer print film, and you'll get extraordinary flexibility and creative lattitude. I've found the Nikon D100 quite satisfactory, though much of that is due to the fact I've been a Nikon user for around 40 years, and have an assemblage of Nikon gear of all sorts and all vintages that pretty much plays well together forward and backward. For around half the price of the D100, you can get a D70 which is more or less the same camera absent a few advanced features.

And if you go digital, you're gonna want a powerful software solution. Though pricey, and with a pretty steep learnin' curve, its hard to beat Adobe PhotoShop, IMO. The current version is PhotoShop CS, but if you look, you can find comparative bargains in older versions. PhotoShop 6 can be found relatively cheaply, and will do more than most folks will ever be able to figure out how or why to get it to do.

Remember though, no matter the quality of the gear, its gonna be no better than its operator. A chain is no stronger than its weakest link. The more you know about the process of photography, the better will be your photographs, and the happier you will be with 'em.

My advice: don't give up and don't fret the equipment thing.

I have an arsenal of cameras and lights and gadgets but many of my very favorite photos are taken with my ancient, bought at a pawnshop, pocket film camera. Okay, I admit, I usually have a CD made when I have prints made so I can do some stuff to the photos but....

It's not about the gear, Gracie!

If you take some photo courses you will learn what you need to about the gear - how to use it and what its for and blah blah blah.

In my opinion, here's what you need: an adjustable camera, a light meter, a grey card. (I actually bought an 8% grey coat so I wouldn't have to carry that damn piece of cardboard around.)

Learn how to use those three things.

I swore I would never switch to digital but I wouldn't recommend anything else to a young photographer - you don't have to pay for your mistakes. The future is digital. Just don't try to print it up on your home computer. Use a lab.

Photography is an art and a science. Anyone can learn the science.

The trick is to have the "eye".

I don't think you would have asked this question if you didn't have the eye.

Or, you know, screw it, and go study dentistry.

But remember, dentistry takes more education.

Don't you mean "18%"? :wink:

BTW - in a pinch, a typical fully printed page, such as from a newspaper or from a magazine, dense text, not images, can be substituted for a standard grey card - though you'd wanna bracket a third of a stop either way just to be sure. The typical Want Ads pages work fine. The palm of the average human hand works really well, too - just take the readin' then open up a full stop. Gotta remember though, its the light at the subject location, not the light at the camera location, that determines the exposure. For example, the proper exposure for a frame-fillin' full moon is precisely the same as would be the proper exposure for a frame-fillin' soccer ball illuminated by full mid-day sunlight. Why? Simple: the objects have similar reflectivity, and both are illuminated by unobscured sunlight - same characteristics, same light source, same exposure.

I'm a hardcore Zone System type.

Hi - I'm a painter but also a photographer

I agree that you need to start off with simple equipment and concentrate on taking pictures and I think Boomerang's advice to go digital to save money is good - you won't have to worry how many you take or how many don't work.

SLR's and film are better but you can move on to them later, if you want to.

If you can't take an interesting photo with a basic camera then all the gadgets in the world won't help you - you need an 'eye' as boomerang said. But if you have an eye then later the gadgets and lenses etc will open up new possibilities and by the time you are ready to move on to them you'll understand them one by one.

Do you read photography magazines? there are some useful ones here so I'm sure there must be in the US.

Look at the work of well known photographers - I started the link below because my daughter got interested in photography quite seriously it might help

photographers thread link