Category: Learning

Creative Ideas at the Creative Lab

Artistic Ideas, Expertise, Learning, Photography, Portraits

Yesterday, I dropped by the Canon Creative Lab in Mississauga where they were hosting Image Wonderland. This was an event showcasing Canon gear (of course), along with a number of sets with models and high end props (including a vintage Cadillac) where you could try out the gear. I’ve never been to one of these, and honestly did not know what to expect.

I’ve been a Canon fan-girl forever, and we were also encouraged to bring our own cameras and shoot away. Images could also be printed through the onsite Canon Print Shop for free, although this was confined to 4×6 prints for walk-ins, and 11×17 prints if you submitted them ahead of time. And there was a series of talks given by Canon Ambassadors, including Irene Rudnyk, Sal Balaji and Steve Russell.

What did I see and experience at the event? Read on…

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Learning Something New is Hard

Architecture, Fine Art, Learning, Photography

My last blog mentioned my recent trip to Los Angeles for a photography workshop that focused on presenting architectural elements as abstracts. It’s a very unique style of presentation, and as it turns out, not one that I am really comfortable with. Some results are great, like the one below. But most, not so much.

The Slide

There seem to be three reasons for this. Find out what they are and why I was surprised by them.

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When It Doesn’t Go As Planned

astrophotography, Learning, Photography

A week ago, like many of you, I packed up the car and headed out to what I thought was a good location to view the total solar eclipse. The first one in my area since 1979, it promised to be epic, if you found the right location.

Well I did and I didn’t. The location was good – open space, near water, where we would see everything surrounding us. The problem was clouds. They thickened as we were setting up and completely engulfed us at totality. No corona shots, no Bailey’s beads, no diamond ring, no nothing.

I learned a few things from this experience and thought I would share them.

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Teaching Styles – Finding the Right One for You

Architecture, Artistic Ideas, astrophotography, Expertise, Learning, Photography

I love to learn. Have all my life. And the winter season is a great time to learn new things, since most of us are stuck inside.

I’ve been concentrating on two paths of learning this winter: astrophotography image processing, and architectural image processing. The first deals with doing the utmost to ensure good image quality and colour representation in the tiny objects photographed in the sky. The second deals with adding tone, contrast and artistic adjustments to architecture to turn them into works of art (beyond the work of art that the architect already produced).

Both paths have brought me in touch with several teachers, respected in their fields. But they could not be more different in their teaching styles. One of the challenges I’ve had has been finding a teaching style that gives me the right learning experience for me.

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One Door Closes…Again!

Career, Learning, Life, My Community, Photography

Back in 2014, I made the decision to retire from full-time work. I was proud at the time that I was able to make a career in jobs I never really loved but that were enough to fund my other interests, such as photography.

In 2021, I decided a little more work was ok, for the first time in a field of interest, and accepted a part-time job at Henry’s, one of Canada’s leading camera and video retailers. This week, that too has come to an end, making room to move forward into new personal challenges.

The job at Henry’s was not just another job. It filled a gap that was years in the making. And it came at a time when the Covid pandemic had stripped away all of my regular face to face human contact. I needed it more than it needed me. So why am I leaving?

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Womanizing Photography

Expertise, Learning, Life, Photography

We live in amazing times. The technological, societal and social changes that have occurred over the past century are mind boggling. I grew up in a small immigrant home, with no air conditioning, no fancy electrical devices (we had a hand-wring washing machine) and no technology of any kind. We got our first colour TV when I was 16.

Today, my life is surrounded by convenience gadgets and entertainment toys of all form and function. I connect more than 20 devices to my home internet network to provide everything from the service to write this post to the automated voice that wakes me in the morning to the electronic keyboard and wonderful online instructor that are teaching me how to play piano. No one born in the mid-20th century could have predicted how far we could come.

Despite those changes, some aspects of our society still could stand with some improvement. Women do not equally participate in all aspects of business, culture and sport. We don’t always get recognition even when we do. Even in my little world of hobbyist photography, the vast majority of people who are accomplished artists and who offer their expertise to others are male. I wanted to bring forward some of those challenges in this post. Maybe some of this applies to you. If so, it would be great to share experiences and advice.

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Space – The Final Frontier

Gear, Learning, Photography, Tools

One of my goals as a retired senior citizen is to indulge all of the interests I’ve developed over the years, now that I have the time and frankly also the money to do so.

I’ve had a long standing love affair with all things in space and space-related. By that, I mean all things off our own planet. From the early days of the Gemini and Apollo programs in the US, I’ve been gripped by a fascination around what and who could be out there. And of course, Star Trek and its offshoots only served to romanticize the idea that strange, wonderful adventures and discoveries could lie beyond our atmosphere.

I had some good fortune when younger to connect with people that worked on these challenges, at least from the point of view of humans living in space. But I’ve come to realize that humans in space is more of a challenge than we know how to solve right now, and I will never live to see permanent residence of any human anywhere other than on the Earth. But there are other ways to explore beyond our tiny speck of a planet, and I have settled on astrophotography as that method for me.

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Putting Things in Context

Artistic Ideas, Expertise, Learning, Photography

One thing that has always surprised me about photography is the number of professionals who describe themselves as “self-taught”, never having taken a course or even read a book about photography.

I’ve seen naturally-talented photographers many times, who with some minimal help understanding buttons and dials on their cameras, can create amazing works of art, all in-camera. They develop formulas for success and are able to apply them without ever formally learning either the technology or the practice of photography.

I’ve seen others not so talented who failed repeatedly before figuring things out and then going on to have successful careers. They too eventually lock down their formulas for success through simple hard work.

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I Like It – That’s All That Matters

Artistic Ideas, Learning, Photography

Some of us amateur photographers participate in competitions, in our local camera clubs and even more broadly in open events such as national competitions or perhaps in specialized events such as landscape or wildlife photographer of the year in our own countries or globally.

The reasons we enter competitions vary widely. For some of us, it is about seeking recognition, so let’s just admit it out of the gate. For others, it’s validation, confirming that others see your work the way you do. Still for others, it’s about self-development and improving our own scores year over year. We also seek out points of comparison to see what we might work on next.

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The World Has Changed

Learning, Life, My Community

We are all looking forward to a “return to normal” as Covid-19 is wrestled to the ground. We seem to get hit in the face repeatedly as we wrestle though. But I’m confident that eventually, there will be no Covid-19 driven restrictions.

But the world has changed, and normal just won’t be that. We see signs of it everywhere – job postings that are not filled because potential employees are afraid of being in service industries, chip shortages, no trucks to ship products, no fresh produce, gas prices that are ridiculously high, more and more people working from home, and my favourite, cameras that are announced one day and cancelled the next.

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