Not yer classic shot of a canna lily I know. In fact, this shot is not one I would have ever taken if I’d not been way out of my normal ‘comfort zone’ today on a photography course.

I was completely unsure what to expect in terms of what the standard of the students would be and the sort of level of tutoring. In the event, there was a complete mix of ‘point and shoot’ through to Hasselblads and a couple of 5Ds. My battered old 10D was probably the mid-point quality of kit-wise and also that would probably be true of me ability-wise.

What I learned was that (somewhat shockingly) you can get to the third year of a degree course in photography and not know that you can change the white balance on a digital camera……even though you own the best consumer digital camera Canon sells! That made me feel good!

Seriously though, I also learned some really good stuff, most of which I’ve not been able to put into practice yet because in an environment where you are vying for use of equipment with the other students it’s not really feasible to hog all of the kit. Anyway, that’s for me to ‘practice at home’ as they say.

Mainly I learned about lighting backgrounds, lighting small areas of the whole image, use of background materials, distance between background and subject and the importance of watching and waiting for the right light.

So, this doesn’t put any of those things into practice because the background isn’t lit, the foreground is lit with a softbox big enough to cover the whole image and there is no ‘right moment’ because I wasn’t dependent on nature for a hand with my lighting.

However, DM says he can detect a difference between the images I’ve taken today and my previous efforts so I’m hoping that in a few days time, when I’ve had time to think about what I’ve seen and heard, I can experiment and try out some of these techniques.

Mostly though, I’m VERY tired!

Last year, I was being VERY naughty!