Photography Workshop with Penny De Los Santos

Ah, the recap.

What an amazing day. First off, I am so thankful for all of the hard work and generosity from so many great businesses in Seattle that made it possible to pull this event off. Trophy Cupcakes donated sweets, our morning coffee was donated by Victrola Coffee, the location and all of the amazing food was prepared by Spring Hill Restaurant and of course Viv pulled it all together. It was an incredible event.

I learned so much today. Being able to gather in one room with so many other wonderful people who are passionate about food and learn from a photographer of this caliber was a real treat. I loved meeting such a wide variety of people today; bloggers and professional photographers, writers and personal chefs, we all came from so many different backgrounds, professions and levels of expertise. But the one thing we have in common is we love what we do and we want to get better at it.

I sure learned enough today to springboard me into the next phase of growth in food photography and I hope this little blog shows it in the coming months.

Penny’s teaching style was real and approachable, she was comfortable with herself and with all of us and I am so grateful she didn’t laugh if you had a blank expression when she talked about f-stops. As she talked about the art of creating good photos, I absorbed inspiration to play with texture, props, color, to vary perspectives, explore the image, capture the story and the mood of the food. I loved the phrase she used of “art begets art” and encouraged us to look at food photography daily, be inspired by other people’s work.

She started to get into the meat of technical details (which I am brand new to!) and touched on shutter speeds, ISO and f-stops. I’m so thankful I wasn’t the only one who was new to this language, and a handful of gracious women explained some terminology to me. Sometimes you just have to be blunt enough to confess you have to start from the beginning on these things. Penny was terrific about pulling some of us aside and starting with the basics on these things and when I had more questions, she answered each of them thoroughly, always quizzing me at the end to make sure I really got it and wasn’t just faking it. ;)

I learned today that I have a lot to learn. I learned the basic beginnings of how to manually manipulate settings on my camera I didn’t know existed. I learned to think outside the box when it comes to food and photography. I learned to be confident when I am a little bit lost. I learned to be bold and share my photos even when I knew they weren’t as good as my peer’s and to absorb the encouraging tips on how to improve each photo.

Thank you Penny. I learned a lot. And I have the tools to keep digging in, to keep exploring and to keep learning.

Oh yes… and we did get to taste all the food we took pictures of. I also learned I need to go to Spring Hill for a meal very soon.

Tags:

This entry was posted on December 11th, 2009 and is filed under Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.