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I have a new workshop that I am doing for busy people who love photography. It is called "Getting the Most Out of Your Camera". If any of the following applies to you, I strongly urge you to sign up for this workshop.
Not that long ago I found myself at a wedding shooting with a Canon L series 70-200mm f2.8 lens, which you can buy for a couple of thousand dollars or so, even used. As I was shooting along this woman asks what is this lens. It makes me look so fancy, like a real photographer (this is one of my many pet peeves about doing photography, probably because of my art background, I have a strong dislike of the idea that a person "looks" like a photographer because of their gear- if you have a bunch of gear, it doesn't mean you know how to use it). When this woman asked what kind of lens it was she said she already had a 70-200mm. When told that it was a different, faster, and much more expensive lens than the one she had her immediate and sincere response was, "I'm going to have to buy that one then!"
I shake my head even now remembering it. She didn't even know what the lens could do. She thought all 70-200mm lenses were the same and she wanted to buy this one because it would make her look, and probably feel, more like a photographer. This was not the first time I have heard or seen something like this before, but still, it sent me wondering. Why, all of the sudden since digital, do amateur or consumer photographers suddenly aspire to buying professional gear? I mean, its not a crime or anything, but I just don't get it. Where did this come from all of the sudden? During the film era consumers didn't walk around with Hassleblads and Mumiyas, yet now I see consumers on a constant quest for more megapixels, as if they were going to take a picture that needed to be blown up to the size of a billboard.
On the other hand, just to make things even more confusing to me, one of my photographer friends, who built up most of his stock library from a point-and-shoot, just got picked up by Getty and made off of one of his point-and-shoot images about $2000, validating that images you make from a point-and-shoot can be just fine too.
I could not figure how to reconcile these two facts together, but then it hit me. I had had another conversation a few weeks back with a very charismatic entrepreneur who was successfully running a handful of small businesses and making a pretty good living off of them, so he went out and bought himself a 5D Mark II and a couple of L series lenses. This is his first SLR. As we were speaking, and I was trying to ascertain why he didn't pick a more hobbyist level camera to start out with, you know something with some training wheel type settings on it (the 5D series has nothing like that), I was able to discern that it came down to that he felt he would make professional level images if he had a professional level camera. I thought this was interesting. And I remembered that every time I have spoken with people in the past about photography, it always comes down to two kinds of discussions- either about gear, or about what it takes to create images from your heart. And the latter are almost always with seasoned professionals, while the former is almost always with hobbyists. This led me to a string of thoughts that led me to an interesting conclusion: maybe the reason why hobbyists are so concerned with gear is because they don't know that their Rebel, or D70, or point-and-shoot can make some really fantastic images, if they know what they are doing with it.
And this leads me to my workshop.
I think it is a total shame that some people are walking around with beautiful, fantastic gear that they really have not unlocked the potential of. I think it is even worse that there are some people out there who cannot afford professional gear and think that for this reason that they should not even bother trying to do photography, even though they want to. Some of the people I have spoken to somewhere in the range of this predicament have even taken photography classes before, but it didn't help them because it didn't teach them how to practically use their own camera, and thereby be able to express themselves. That is what I created this workshop for. I know that a lot of people are busy, and so I condensed the basics into a workshop that I could teach effectively in one day. It will involve theory, but since theory is no good without practical application, we will also be out shooting. It will definitely be a fun day, and by the end of it, you will know the basics of what you need to to go out on your own and continue shooting and get more out of your camera- whatever kind of camera it is.
If you want to join the workshop, you can sign up on my website at www.alexisevanoff.com under "workshops".
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