Mission Accomplished!

The graduating class:

Timo, Koert, Sara, Ryenne, Paula (in yellow), Matt, Elaine, me and Bruce.

Mission Accomplished!

Bruce researched and booked this trip. When he told me about it, I decided that I would like to go too. I thought a month in Africa doing daily game drives, hanging out with Bruce and learning more about photography and editing would be a great way to spend four weeks. During the course we had numerous workshops on photography, from learning to shoot in the RAW format (which makes a much larger file with much more information that can then be manipulated in an editing program; about aperture, ISO and shutter speed settings and the relationships between them; composition; landscape photography; astronomy photography and ethical photography. This is what I wanted to learn about because I had bought the best DSLR camera (according to all the YouTube reviews) for my Antarctica trip. But I really only used it as a point and shoot camera because I didn’t understand all of what it is capable of. I am not a manual reader and didn’t really investigate it. Then when I signed up for the photography project, they told us we needed to purchase PhotoShop’s Lightroom program, which I did. However, I did not explore it or watch any of the tutorials. Therefore, when I showed up at African Impact I was essentially a newbie. I have taken thousands of photographs on my travels with various different point and shoot cameras, but I heard a quote that resonated with me: He’s a picture taker, not a picture maker. Real photographers take a lot of time setting up the shot and waiting for the best lighting or best sighting. They use professional long lenses and use the multiple photo option to get best possible shot – often shooting dozens of photos. Bruce, Timo, Koert and Matt all do that. They have excellent long lenses that allow them to get shots of birds and animals at a great distance. Elaine, Ryenne and I just took one or two photos with our cameras which had good lenses but not like theirs. I am an in the moment photographer in that I take photos of things that interest me on my travels. They are memory photos. I am not the type that is into waiting for an animal to do something or a bird to fly or hiding in a blind to wait and watch. I am a taker not a maker.

As jealous as I am of my friends and the phenomenal photos they are able to get with their professional and expensive equipment, I am content to take photos the way I do. I am not willing to invest in the equipment and am definitely not interested in lugging it around with me on my travels. Bruce and Koert had extra big bags to accommodate their cameras (both had two cameras) and extra lenses, not to mention tripods, gimbals and other stuff. It is just too cumbersome, heavy and awkward on flights and other modes of transport. So, I have decided I will shoot in RAW on my upcoming big trips but will shoot jpeg for normal everyday picture taking. I will keep my subscription to Lightroom until the fall at least to learn to edit my photos. On this trip I did a little bit of editing, but I really didn’t have the time or instruction on how to do it properly, because of the hectic requirements of the course program and the daily game drives. In addition, my focus is always the blog, and that took up a lot of my spare time. It must be noted that none of the pictures I posted are edited, I simply didn’t have time. Editing can be a very time intensive activity and you can manipulate the shot in innumerable ways. So, when I get home I will hopefully take the time to learn more about editing by working on the best of my Africa shots. It’s also interesting that when I talked to the other three and asked what they did with their shots, they all said that they love to take photos and edit them but don’t really do much with them. It’s kind of a collecting hobby, knowing that you have got the best shot and editing it to the best of your ability. They all would like to be able to sell some of their shots, or have sold a few, but the competition out there is incredible. Another thing I was thinking about is that you can manipulate the shot so much that it is no longer a real representation of shot, but becomes more of a work of art. I watched as Paula removed branches from one of my shots, changed the colour temperature, cropped it and changed the exposure, all of which made the picture better but is it really what I shot?

However, having said all of that I have learned a lot about the techniques of photography and more importantly, I have a much better idea of what my camera can do and how to get the best out of it. So mission accomplished!