Lessons from conducting beginner workshops.

<p>There was a question in an earlier formum about the teaching of beginners. This is my experience in a belated answer to that question. Last November I was asked to conduct a series of workshops for photography novices by a local artist association. After some planning and publicity in January of this year I conducted four workshops of two hours apiece for twenty people. I originally started out to present four separate two hour sessions but due to demand from the initial participants for more; two of the four turned out to be continuations of the first two sessions. There was a nominal charge for each session. My background is seven years in my own photo business where I did weddings, PR, portraits, etc. and about the same amount of time with a newspaper doing general news and sports. I had my own studio and film darkroom. I converted to digital in 2002 and do most of my own printing. I asked paricipants to bring their cameras and manuals and not to forget charged batteries and cards. Most of these participants were artists who wanted to learn photography so there was a general understanding of composition and color. They came with all manner of cameras from P&S to DSLRs. Frankly, the P&Ss presented the most difficulty because they are so different from brand to brand. And, they are, of course the least flexible. In DSLRs there were Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Konica/Minolta.</p>

<p>The actual sessions went quite well. Subjects covered were: Participant experience and expectations, participant cameras briefly, switches batteries, cards, etc., how the camera processes light(aperture, ISO, shutter speed) which took some time, noise, ISO, focus, DoF, high contrast, What P, TV, Av, M on Canon, P, S, A, M(Nikon, Sony) means on the camera (none of them really knew), sensor sizes and their apparent effect on lenses, a general discussion of lenses, white balance etc.</p>

<p>Surprisingly we got through most of the above in both sets of sessions. Not everyone got everything that was presented but I kept it extremely simple without much theory and demonstrated everything with the P&S, 1.6 crop, and full frame bodies I brought. The big probelm stated by almost all of the participants was that they did not know enough to understand the instruction booklets that came with their cameras. A goal of these workshops was to give them enough vocabulary, i.e. aperture, shutter speed, ISO so that they could understand their manuals and proceed from there. <br>

Not having taught in a while I learned a lot myself. Some of things I learned were:</p>

<ol>

<li>About four hours was enough time to give an overview so that there is enough knowledge so that paricipants who felt stymied in their start to learning more about photography could move ahead on their own. At least that is what many of them told me at the end. </li>

<li>The use of props, like my cameras, tripod and their cameras and guide books is also important to the learning process. I used a lot of my blowups to illustrate good and bad. It helps stay away from dry lecture format. I mounted my 100-400L and 5D on a tripod and zoomed it back and forth while each student looked through the viewfinder. It saved a thousand words on focal length and zoom lens function for example. </li>

<li>Letting students fool with their equipment and read their instruction books while I was talking helped their understanding because of the diversity of equipment we were dealing with. </li>

<li>I walked around and gave a lot of individual help and also learned a thing or two about Sony bodies. </li>

<li>Basics such as shutter speed, ISO and lens opening are essential to move on to greater understanding of other camera processes. Almost all of them grasped those basics.</li>

<li>Questions from participants are critical because they lead you to teach at the level of understanding that you need to reach. </li>

<li>Tables for the participants are essential to hold their equipment. </li>

<li>I promised to hold another series in the Spring. I had fun. We had fun. </li>

</ol>

<p> </p>

<p>Good stuff Dick, thanks for sharing! <br /> <br /> I asked, and good some really good and interesting suggestions and ideas, in the Beginner's Forum a while back. Doing some classes for at-risk-youth. Turned out ok. Nothing earth-shattering but most of the guys seemed to like it and at least brought something away with them when we were done. I'd do it again in a heart-beat.</p>

<p>Very helpful information, Dick.</p>

<p>You have a very organized way of communicating which I'm sure it helped in your approach to teaching.</p>

<p>Just wondering if you had any students before learning the basics pressing you to show them how to get a "look or color style" in their images they've seen on the web.</p>

<p>I thought of offering similar classes in my local area but thought the only thing that would keep young people interested was to show them how those kind of images were produced. I take it from your experience your students were just as enthralled at learning just the basics.</p>

<p>Do you find including your extensive background in photography convinced your students you knew what you were talking about? And if so, what approach would you recommend someone like myself with experience not primarily in photography, but more from an image reproduction, processing and restoration background most of it self taught?</p>

<p>Thanks Dick. I've considered presenting such workshops myself and your notes are very valuable.</p>

<p>Thanks Dick. I've considered presenting such workshops myself and your notes are very valuable.</p>

<p>Thanks Dick. I've considered presenting such workshops myself and your notes are very valuable.</p>

<p>Tim. I do think that my background helped attract customers. The problem was that in four hours I just could not get far enough to get into printing. I kind of set them up for making jpeg adjustments in the camera and going to Walmart or somehwere to get their printing done until they learned more. I think the next logical step would get into PS basics and printing basics. I actually took a small printer to class that could print from a card but never got that far. I think there are lots of people who just can never get beyond the basics without help. I have a lot of 13X19 prints that I showed to talk about composition, fill the frame and how to screw up dynamic range and burn out highlights and block up shadows. Most of them are good prints and they certainly indicated they would eventually like to emulate them. But a picture with blown out highlights or blocked up shadows or both is worth a thousand words. I have a few of those. </p>

<p>It's amazing how much knowledge can be acquired on this subject. I think it's only realized until it's taught or conveyed to others and then it just pours out like a flood. It's really difficult to pace yourself or else you'll never complete a full session.</p>

<p>Last and only consulting job I ended up telling a client who was starting a fine art canvas print business to supplement his art gallery that he had to either buy a new expensive wide format printer or find the linearization and/or optimization setting of his old used printer so he could profile it. He could never get a screen to print match and I had to explain to him why. The local University's Fine Art professor had a go at it using his newly acquired $3000 Profilemaker Pro package and couldn't get it to work.</p>

<p>I talked to my client for almost three days on the subject of color management and how it worked and why it wasn't working for him. He'ld been lead on by those he paid big money to for the components that it would all work out fine. He didn't understand what proprietary software meant.</p>

<p>I couldn't believe how much of this subject I had stuck in my head because it had all been second nature to me but Greek to him. I was exhausted at the end of it.</p>

<p>He later ended up buying the upgraded printer where he's now getting good screen to print matches. </p>

<p>By the way I had a private session yesterday with one of my students and she had a Sony A350 a body that I am not familiar with because I have been locked into Canon for 20 years. It has internal IS and I was quite impressed by the camera, the LCD and the pictures it was taking. But your point, Tim about having all this stuff in your head coming out when you hardly know it is there is true. She wants to do some before and after portraits and I talked to her for an hour about it and how her camera worked. </p>

<p>Dick, I had a similar experience with a muralist I bumped into while out shooting some macro shots of flowers with my Pentax K100D. She, the muralist, saw I had a long lens (don't take that the wrong way) on my camera and suspected I was a professional photographer and asked me to show her how to take better pictures of her murals with her Sony P&S.</p>

<p>I could see she didn't know how to adjust the color temp seeing the prints she showed me had her murals shot in an office complex under mixed tungsten and fluorescent lights depending where the mural was located. I spent about an hour telling her why the color varied in her shots so you know how involved that got. She just looked at me with glazed eyes and just handed her camera to me to find the settings for her.</p>

<p>I spent another hour fumbling through a series of buttons and menu's and ended up handing the camera back to her indicating I was now just as confused as her. I was familiar with my own Pentax DSLR's navigation system but seeing that tiny Sony P&S left me baffled.</p>