Dedication to someone who taught us so much.

On March 2nd, we lost our instructor, Dick Garvey, to cancer.
Besides loosing a good man and a good friend, we lost an very valuable instructor. Photography was Dick's greatest passion, and teaching photography was very important to him. He didn't just do it for the money (that was just an added bonus), he did it because he loved to teach others and to watch them grow as photographers.

His student's loved him for his unique approach to teaching photography.
It wasn't just about the technical with Dick, it was about reaching inside and discovering why you want to take this photograph, did you feel that you accomplished and conveyed what you were trying to say with your photography, what was your vision. His 'critiquing' style was his forte. This was where you would really learn about photography. Just watching him and listening to him would give you what you needed to become a better photographer. His wit and his charm made the classes fun and exciting.

Dick had quite the following, he had students that would take just about every class we did. One of the classes we did for awhile, was a Portfolio class. It ran monthly and students were encouraged to think about how they would like to portray their work. We talked about different options available today and what would best suit them. This class was to help them continue to move forward, even if all they wanted to do was share their work with friends and family. It was discussed that your 'portfolio' would always be changing, as well, as your work. One of his students completed her first 'portfolio'. She did it as a book and dedicated it to Dick. Here is a link to Anne's new book, 'A Trip Around the Edges', one of Dick's many sayings.

He will be missed by all of us

A Fun Little Workshop with John Holtman

We recently had a class on macro and creative fun photography at Christianson's Nursery. We started the day with a discussion where our instructor, John Holtman, shared techniques and took us on a visual exploration of images that he has photographed. Then our hostess, Margie Hart at La Conner Flats, served us a delicious lunch of homemade vegetable soup and sandwiches. It was a chilly and sunny day in the middle of February, as we descended upon the grounds of Christianson's Nursery to practice all that John taught us. Everyone took to the task with a seriousness and dedication that shows in their photography. We ended the day with a group shot.

To see some of the images from this wonderful day visit our Facebook Page - http://www.facebook.com/thatphotoshoppe.

As a bonus - Christianson's was sponsoring a photography contest and one of our students won second place. Congrats to Anne - to see more of Anne's work read her blog.

Here is the image that won second place.

What I learned at our 'To Blog or not to Blog class'.

I recently produced a class on, 'To Blog or not to Blog?", I think I was channeling Shakespeare or something? Anyway it was a pretty full house. This was not a class on how to make a career out of blogging, it was simply a class on how to set up a blog and what you could do with it, a very beginner's basics.

The students were comprised of adults, most of which are retired. Some wanted to learn to blog about their hobbies or art, others had a small business and some wanted to blog about life. The instructor uses Wordpress, so we based the class around that (sorry blogger!).

Here was the challenges, some expected, some not.

First was preparing a handout for the class (the middle to older generation still likes handouts). It was hard to come up with a step-by-step of even the basics, in Wordpress. Since there is so much to learn about Wordpress, I wanted something to give as a guideline . I was surprised though that even Wordpress didn't have anything online, no PDF's, nothing to download. I ended up just doing a document listing resources and some links on how to get started with Wordpress.

Second challenge (and this was a big one), keeping everyone on the same page, or at least the same chapter. Each student brought a computer, and what should have been done was have them log in using one site, one theme and then just walk them through it. Instead each student started their own project, used a different theme (which caused it own set of challenges) and was at different levels of doing their own thing and learning.

Usually when we teach a Photoshop class we have everyone working on the same project. We still have the issue of different learning levels but by having everyone working on the same project it makes it more manageable. When you have everyone working on different projects, especially beginners, you loose control quickly and it is harder to maintain and stay on the subject's course. Which is sort of what happened here.

What did I learn from all of this? 1. K.I.S.S. When I do this again, we will keep it simple, follow some basic steps, have everyone working from the same page. 2. Keep the class a little smaller. 3. Do like we do when teaching Photoshop Elements, break it down and teach in segments. We tried to cram too much into one day. 4. Maybe have a class in Blogger:-)

BTW - Here is a link to one our student's new blog (the one she started in class) - http://takenbyanne.wordpress.com. Some of the names of the blogs were very clever.