Photography 101 Learning Session

Every Friday at Spies & Assassins someone leads a learning session we call Spies Junction. This can be on any wide array of topics from sketching storyboards to lock picking. I mean we have to live up to our name from time to time! My contribution so far has been a course on photography.

I led a primer on a full photography workflow, Photography 101. Just enough to get someone started setting up the camera and exposing images themselves. Then once they have their image the ability to edit and share the image. How I went about doing live demos is explained further below.

The setup for live demos was simple. A tripod and live-view of my camera output through HDMI to a flatscreen. This paired with Exposure Simulation on the live view and full view of how the light meter was working seemed to be a easy way to understand in real-time how the change of camera settings affects the image. Shutter speed changes can be seen immediately in the exposure simulation of the live-view. For aperture when using the DoF Preview button displays the actual DoF in the live-view as well.

The full presentation is up and hosted on my domain for those who may be curious. I had a great time presenting and sharing my knowledge with everyone. Even if I helped just one person better understand how to think about changing their images then I am happy of the outcome. I will be following up this class with more classes which will dive into more topics of photography. Next up will be composition and creative effects as the 101 was heavily technical.