Workshop day! With a very enthusiastic group who sacrificed their precious Saturday to learn photography. Such was the enthusiasm that they streamed in before the scheduled 8am meeting time. As far as coincidences go, everyone brought along Canon DSLRs. The good thing about this is, yes, lens sharing! Since I brought along lenses which the others didn’t have, we had a good time comparing notes and trying out different lenses to get different perspectives. The result, Dee bought a 50mm F1.8 just a few hours into the workshop!

So after a couple of hours going through some basics, we were ready to go out shooting. First stop was Fort Canning. Along the way, we had a chance to practice panning and using shutter speeds to freeze motion, and using different apertures to play with the depth of field. I had a go at exercising at Fort Canning, while the others had a chance to freeze my motion. We also experimented the range of shutter speeds to pan moving vehicles and Dee had a great shot.

A quick lunch ensued and it was lesson time again at a coffee outlet. It was all about composition this time. We went through the basic rules of composition eg, rules of thirds, using leading lines, colour, etc. I was impressed by another shot by Dee of Sharm, using her new 50mm lens. Love the composition and the mood attached to the image. I’m not sure what Sharm was doing but not posing for Dee I’m sure.

With the added knowledge about composition we walked around Club Street and Ann Siang Hill. A lot of opportunity to practice techniques like framing.

As with every other day recently, the weather got unbearably hot in the afternoon and the only solution was ice cold beer. It was a stroke of genius to have chosen Club Street, since we had many drinking holes to choose from. And so it was review time. It was not a simple ‘good or bad’ review but more like ‘what were you thinking of??’ when you took that picture. So everyone had a go at revealing their thought process and the others had a go at critiquing and suggesting alternatives. I feel that this is one of the best ways to learn fast. So we had a lot of fun letting it go at one another and then it was time to move to our final destination to try low light photography.

We ended the day at ACM/Fullerton Hotel area. The place was crowded with people hoping to catch the fireworks during the National Day preview. So we experimented with flash settings and got around to shoot portraits of each other with a combination of flash and ambient lighting.

It was a very fruitful day indeed. A lot of information shared and a lot to remember but as I always mention, keep practicing and everything you learn will come back to you one way or another.

Thanks Sharm, Dee, Chris and Ritchie for participating. You guys were awesome!

My next workshop is on 15 August 09. Again the class size is limited to 4 people for maximum attention and for ease of traveling to different areas in Singapore. Please check the Workshop page for more info.