Asia Mega Tour II - Photo Workshop Homework

On Sunday evening we took a second workshop with a small photography tour company called Eye Explore. We had also done a workshop with them in Kyoto. Based on that experience we had some idea of what to expect...a lot of intense work packed into two and a half hours and being thrown a lot of new and different concepts. And if Wife found these things we were learning challenging, you can imagine how they were for me who is much, much, much less knowledgeable.

But I give the guys at Eye Explore credit. They really worked with you. They helped you physically with your camera to get the right settings (pretty amazing when you consider the numbers of different types of cameras they are exposed to. They challenged you. And they can you positive feedback. I can honestly say I learned a helluva a lot from both of the workshops we participated in.

At this workshop our leader, Stephane, a Frenchman living in Tokyo, truly came at things from an artistic perspective. This was a big challenge for me because for the most part I take pictures to accentuate the story telling of my blog. So there were a lot of concepts that were very alien to me and his eye...what he thought was artistic looking...was not something that I could relate to...at least when we started.

We essentially worked on these techniques:

• Taking candid photos of people using various backgrounds
• Playing around with the speed we were shooting with to cause effects
• Composing pictures using diagonal angles
• Changing perspectives based upon where one took a picture from

I took a ton of pictures. Most sucked so you are only going to have to endure a few pounds of my artistic photography learning.  Think of it as your child coming home with that picture that you must put up on the refrigerator. And don't try to not look at them. I've embedded a malware in this post that will eat your hard drive if you don't grit your teeth and look at all these wonderful pictures.

Cast of Characters

Stephane

Stephane with fellow workshop mate, Dave, a surgeon from Melbourne Australia

The always intense Wife

Candid shots taken against the 'sea of people'

Candid shots making use of different types of backgrounds

Candid shots with subject relatively motionless against and interesting background and shutter speed set to create blur of people moving

Trying to look for the interesting not just the normal

Guy really liking his cotton candy

Girl friend of the guy

Cute baby picture

Not part of the class but a target of opportunity

Making use of reflections

This was a bitch. Vast majority were trashed

Adjusting to low light and making use of diagonal lines