Photography Lighting

I was surprised at myself for only attending one photography session, but I'm not so sure I even learned anything from it. Paul Fetters, a D.C. freelance photographer, has shot for various newspapers like USA Today and has even photographed the godfather himself, Francis Ford Coppola. He started the session with some pictures from his calendar project, which is when he took a new picture everyday and posted it on his website. Some of the shots had very interesting lighting, and I was excited to embark on this great photography adventure. After the slideshow he took pictures of one of the students, using new light each time he shot. He briefly talked about different lighting and ways to create it. The best advice I received from this session was to shoot everyday. It helps not only to build up a portfolio, but to increase knowledge and skill as well.

Mary Manno

How to Write Visually

I was really impressed by this session, which was held at 9 a.m. on Thursday morning. After my long day of traveling with only 3 hours of sleep (thank you, Current Sauce), I was surprised by how lively I was for this first session.

The main idea of the session was to describe how good photography and writing are similar. The lecturers, Brian Poulter and Joe Gisondi from Eastern Illinois University, went through the hierarchy of photography and described them in terms of writing.

1. Informational- This is the foundation of any news story. It is the inverted pyramid and facts without flavor.

2. Graphic information- This is where details are observed and described. Certain items are used to focus the story and create a picture in a person's mind. Reporting was defined as the "fine art of hanging out."

3. Emotional writing- This captures the feel and emotion of a story. The main factor of this sense of writing is to get the reader to react(laugh, cry, become angry, etc.) The speakers emphasized speaking to other people about the focus person to find personal facts about them.

4. Intimate writing- This is the hardest form of writing. It takes the reader to a place that is rarely seen. In order to capture an intimate portrait of a person, one must ask questions like, "what were you thinking about at that time?" and create a relationship with the subject.

This was definitely my favorite session of the day.

Kera Simon

Adobe Production Studio

Jason Levine, the Adobe evangelist, had to be the most excited instructor I had seen all day. This man eats, sleeps and breathes Adobe software. He only had time to show us a few things in Adobe Photoshop CS3. His enthusiasm made me excited about the new features that Photoshop CS3 has to offer. Images can now be made into a 3-D model without taking as much time. Objects can be selected without the dreaded magnetic lasso tool taking 30 minutes to trace. We also learned that now video can be edited using Photoshop. The new features reduce time and improve quality of images.

Mary Manno