Posts Tagged ‘photography course’
Wild Arena – Big Cats 2 Workshop and Experience – Review
Posted by richard in Photography on September 27th, 2009
I meant to blog about this in the week, but last Sunday I visited the Wildlife Heritage Foundation as part of the Wild Arena Big Cats 2 Workshop and Experience which I blogged about a while back. I thought I’d share my experience and show off some of my photos from the day.
Their site in Kent is excellent. It’s only open to the general public through specialist days (photographer, wildlife experiences, etc.), through which they are funded and so it’s a lot more intimate than a zoo. The enclosures are arranged around a central grass car park, ideal as you can keep heavy kit in your car which is never too far away for a quick lens change. Having said that, I managed to spent the entire day shooting with my 70-300 IS USM, despite bringing my entire kit bag and tripod!
As the site takes part in numerous breeding projects for the cats, it’s no surprise that animal welfare is their number one priority and this is reflected in the quality of the enclosures and environments they provide. The obvious advantage for photography is that you can get right up to the enclosures and take pictures through the bars which eliminates the usual problems you get trying to photograph big cats (or any of the more dangerous animals) in zoos, where you are kept back from the enclosure by another fenced off area meaning you can’t keep the bars out of shot.
Experience Seminars – Understanding your digital EOS (Part 1)
Posted by richard in Photography on January 17th, 2009
I’ve just come back from attending Experience Seminar’s “Understanding your digital EOS (Part 1)” course at their training centre in Huntingdon and was thoroughly impressed.
I’ve owned a Canon dSLR for a few years now (originally a 350D and more recently upgraded to a 40D) and although I had a basic general understanding of concepts like aperture, exposure and ISO, and tried to apply them to my photography, shooting mostly in Program mode, it was great to have some of the chasm-like gaps in my self-taught knowledge filled in.
The course covered what they call the “Basic Overrides”, and included topics such as AWB, WB presets, ISO and using ‘Tv’ and ‘Av’ modes to control aperture and shutter speeds independently, before finally working towards Program mode. The course content was backed up with image slideshows containing loads of example situations (fast moving objects, portrait, landscape, low light, fireworks, etc) along with guidance on which settings would produce the best results in the form of the image EXIF information alongside. For me this part was the most useful as it often took seeing a picture at a particular aperture or shutter time setting to make sense of it all.
Their training centre is well laid out and professionally ran and although a bit remote, is easy to get to by car and is surrounded by beautiful Cambridgshire countryside. I only regret not getting there earlier in the morning to take some shots!
I’m enrolled on their Part 2 course later on in the year so I’ll report back.
